A Message for U.S. Haiti Critics: Think First

File this one under the heading, "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished."

While rescue teams continue to deal with the enormous challenge of bringing aid to Haiti, some outsiders have faulted the United States for making a bad situation even worse. There also are complaints that the U.S. is more concerned with imposing a form of "disaster capitalism" on Haiti than in helping the survivors rebuild their lives.

You knew it was going to reach this point, though I have to confess astonishment at how quickly the second-guessers concluded this was turning into a rerun of The Ugly American.

Writing in Britain's Guardian, Seumas Milne contrasts the laudatory job turned in by "Welsh firefighters and Cuban doctors" who "have been getting on with the job of saving lives" with the well, less laudatory role of the 82nd Airborne Division, which he notes "was busy parachuting into the ruins of Haiti's presidential palace."

"Most scandalously," he writes, "U.S. commanders have repeatedly turned away flights bringing medical equipment and emergency supplies from organizations such as the World Food Programme and M?decins Sans Fronti?res, in order to give priority to landing troops. Despite the remarkable patience and solidarity on the streets and the relatively small scale of looting, the aim is said to be to ensure security and avoid "another Somalia" – a reference to the US military's "Black Hawk Down" humiliation in 1993. It's an approach that certainly chimes with well-established traditions of keeping Haiti under control."

Scandalously?

With all due respect to the Welsh and Cuban volunteers who, obviously, deserve kudos for their humanitarian work, Milne's paint-by-the-numbers portrayal of sinister U.S. intention in Haiti misstates the mission as well as the intention behind it. This isn't Iraq and it isn't Afghanistan. There's no disagreement about the objective, Milne's carping, notwithstanding. The 82nd Airborne, which got sent in to establish rudimentary order on the ground, moved into a vacuum left by the quake with the objective of getting the flow of supplies moving into the disaster area. It's hard getting worked up if some of their decisions offended the sensibilities of more tender souls tut-tutting from the safety and comfort of their offices thousand of miles away.

Milne and others do accurately note the U.S. has a bad history with Haiti. (For too many years, we supported one of the most repressive regimes in the Western Hemisphere.) But then they fly off into the impenetrable world of dark conspiracy to press the argument that corporate interests and their government lackeys are out to exploit crises like Haiti in order to push "predatory neoliberal policies."

Time to sit down with a Darvon and a cherry Coke.

You can cherry pick the historical record to support that argument in other theatres where U.S. gunboat diplomacy has resulted in less-enlightened foreign policy decisions. Not here. If Haiti offers a would-be imperialist strategic or mineral advantage these days, please enlighten me about it.

In the last week, the French, the Italians and the Brazilians have complained about the U.S. refusal to allow aid planes to land. France's Cooperation Minister - they have a Cooperation Minister? even mused that international aid efforts were supposed to be helping Haiti, not "occupying" it. That might have been the final straw for Hillary Clinton, who held a Town Hall meeting with State Department personnel on Tuesday.

"Some of the international press either misunderstood or deliberately misconstrued what was a civilian and military response, both of them necessary in order to be able to deliver aid to the Haitians who desperately needed it," she said. "I have absolutely no argument with anyone launching a legitimate criticism against our country," she said. "I think we can learn from that, and we are foolish if we keep our head in the sand and pretend that we can't."

She's Secretary of State and her job is to be a diplomat. In this case, though, too bad she didn't just tell the Haiti critics to take a hike.

[NowBeWithThat]

Those armchair generals so glibly complaining about the U.S. military presence in Haiti should try feeding a mob themselves sometime.

You can't feed a mob. It's impossible.

The restoration of order is essential to the life of the Haitian people and to the rebuilding of their nation.

[Xamkr]

Given the problems our military have caused in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc., you can see why people would have a hair-trigger response to criticize any action taken by the US military.

[excop1949]

i guess the basic question for all the critics is:
"Is Haiti better off because of U.S. efforts?"
If so, shut up...

[stevador39]

The United States cannot afford a national health care program for its own citizens who pay the taxes these charities and Non-governmental organizations are wasting in Haiti. There are one million U.S. children on the streets. Millions of families have lost their homes in the U.S. Millions of working U.S. citizens have lost their jobs. International aid should be paid for by the do-gooders and not the U.S. taxpayer.

[VBnews]

100% correct!!! The government should choose whether or not I want to help...I should choose!!

[macmsgt]

Here's a thought, SusanStoHelit, if you have not been there, keep your own criticisms to yourself. Having spent 20 months in Haiti in the early nineties, I can tell you that on a good day nothing goes smoothly. With the impact of an earthquake, forget it. Critics complain that aid isn't responding fast enough, all the while looking at the U.S. So, the U.S. sends down elements of the 82nd to enable the airport to take in aircraft, an aircraft carrier to provide medical facilities, loads up a recently returned Marine Expeditionary Unit and sends them to provide assistance (note that those ships were pretty much offloaded, and subsequently had to be uploaded with equipment and personnel), initiated and airlift the likes not seen since the Berlin airlift, and to an airport that has two strips to take in birds, and turns around another Marine Expeditionary Unit to provide additional support. Okay, and let's roll in the air force assets who have to scrounge a mobile air traffic control system to enable them to control the birds orbiting and waiting to land.

Bad U.S., bad! Give me a break. Stop the bellyaching, unplug your butt from the couch and TV, and go down there and give them a hand. I don't care what the French, or any other European for that matter, much less the Cubans or Venezuelan despots, have to say. They have no credibility, and do nothing but *****.

Do something to help, or plug it.

Nuff said.

[us_1776]

They were not turning planes away. They were stacking them up in a holding pattern for landing and many of the flights were just too low on fuel to wait for their turn to land so they had to divert to airports in the Dominican Republic.

There were also thousands of flights trying to get into the airport and it could only support about 120-140 flights per day.

The U.S. immediately launched a massive effort to help save the Haitian people. We're talking millions of people in peril. For those overseas in the comfy armchairs to be launching criticisms of the U.S. and to promote the efforts of a few small easily-deployed non-U.S. teams is to not understand the absolute gigantic magnitude of the problem in Haiti.

[SusanStoHelit]

A nice rant - but it's fascinating how content free it is. I see nothing that debunks any claims of misplaced priorities, nothing that defends the priorities used to determine which planes landed - just a bunch of stuff attacking critics without considering if the criticism was valid.

[charliecooperatcbs]

"....any claims of misplaced priorities." that's exactly right. claims. meanwhile, the important and hard work of organizing a crisis zone so that it can get to the next level of stabilization continues. fact is that armchair critics 1000 miles away always know better. or do they?