<$BlogRSDUrl$>

2.24.2004

kerry on haiti 

ok, folks... here's another news-sample-entry... kerry has just suggested that if he were in office, he would consider intervention in haiti. this is from a NYtimes story:

He said that if he were president, he would be pressing Haitian rebels to back off their goal of toppling Mr. Aristide, perhaps by threatening the deployment of an international peacekeeping force.

"I think you've got to be real and threatening," he said. His message to the rebels, he said, would be: "You're not going to take over, you're not kicking him out, this democracy is going to be sustained, we're willing to put in a new government, new prime minister, we're willing to work with you, but you're not going to succeed in your goal of exiling" Mr. Aristide. "And unless that's clear, you can't necessarily stop it in its tracks."


there is, in this admittedly tiny sound-bite (my second in a row... apologies), a kind of language that bothers me-- i.e. "we're willing to put in a new government". isn't this the same sort of brutish assumption of sovereignity utilized by rumsfeld, etc. during the war in iraq???

perhaps the biggest question in my brain in the wake of the iraq fiasco is the one of "intervention." the past few years have got me thinking more and more about the u.s. as part of a global picture, and this issue seems to me to be amazingly complex. it is also blurring the boundaries of right/left in a confusing, occasionally alienating way.

i don't know enough about haiti to have a bold opinion about whether or not intervention would be a good idea (i felt the same way about the issue of charles taylor in liberia). i know too little of the stakes of american interest in the region. but as the "world's only superpower," as the self-congratulatory phrasing goes, it seems to me that the issue of aid and intervention is in need of far greater debate.

the majority of the left-leaning publications i turn to (the nation, z-net, tompaine) all seem to lack a clear plan on this issue, and instead focus on criticism of our foreign policy decisions in the past, and the reprehensible lack of humanitarian funding of the present (whether it is towards fighting aids, rebuilding afghanistan, providing doctors and medical care... the list goes on). what emerges, at its worst, resembles a kind of old-right isolationism, albeit with less xenophobic sentiments in mind. an isolationism of good intentions, perhaps.

(i'm stealing that last thought, by the way, at least partially from "liberal hawk" christopher hitchens. while i ultimately don't agree with him in the least, his bitchy two-cents on these issues are extremely informative.)

at any rate, i'd like to leave this post as a question... i'm wondering what people's thoughts are on this??? when and where are interventions of this sort justified??

also, in a larger sense, if anyone knows of any resources to help mobilize change in our foreign aid policies, i'd love to hear them (perhaps future posts will share such discoveries). too often, the old criticism-of-foreign-policy approach comes as an afterthought (consider how democratic candidates today are debating the war in iraq as if it hasn't already occurred). as a citizen, i'm curious to find out where concern and dissent are needed, prior to disaster.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?