Obama Gets It Mostly Right on Haiti, So Far
I admire Barack Obama for a lot of what he’s been saying and doing in response to the disaster in Haiti.
He’s reacted swiftly, he’s struck the right moral tone, and he’s pledged $100 million in aid.
But he hasn’t done everything right.
For one thing, he’s appointed George W. Bush to head up the U.S. relief effort there with Bill Clinton, the same George Bush who backed the coup that expelled Aristide, the democratically elected president, from Haiti.
And I’ve got a couple worries going forward.
What if the U.S. troops that Obama sent down to Haiti start doing not just relief operations but security operations? Are we going to see U.S. troops firing on looters in Haiti? I sure hope not.
And how heavy a hand is the United States going to use in rebuilding Haiti to fit the free market model so beloved in Washington?
As Naomi Klein has warned us on Democracy Now, the Heritage Foundation has already called for using this crisis to “reshape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy.”
The Heritage Foundation doesn’t care about the people of Haiti. It cares about ramping up U.S. corporate profits there.
We can’t let Haiti be another proving ground for Naomi Klein’s theory of “disaster capitalism.”
That won’t help the people of Haiti, who need help so badly today.
Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine. To subscribe for just $14.97 a year, just click here.
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Resist Censorship in Tucson
- Banned in Tucson
- An Interview with Carlos Muñoz on the Tucson Book Ban
| Banned Authors Respond | |
CURRENT ISSUE: FEBRUARY 2012
Inside the Occupy Movement
| We visited nearly thirty occupations in twenty states in two months.
What I got at Occupy Wall Street
I spent seven weeks in Zuccotti Park, and here is what I got.
Danny Glover
| The Progressive Interview | March 2012 issue
To Wed or Not to Wed
| March 2012 issue
Progressive Matt
The Koch Brothers Conspire to Buy the White House
Comments
Yeah Greg, there was mayhem in New Orleans, what with Relief Workers prevented from entering the City by your military, and of course, plenty of law abiding, high ground dwelling, white folk, seemed to get pissed
off, when that same military came by to collect their guns.
But you only saw on the tube, those lawless Poor folks, as they went scavenging for food at damaged Grocery stores, to prevent themselves from starving, as aide and escape, were being deliberately with held.
All part of you being conditioned to view these victims as deliberate participants, not to have compassion on, but to be smugly scorned.
Human Compassion has no place, if "Totalitarianism"
is to ever succeed in America.
Talk about your "Proving ground".