The Sorrow of Haiti

On February 28, 2004, in the middle of the night, the US again invaded Haiti. It abducted and forcibly removed democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide by its staged coup d'etat and flew him against his will to the Central African Republic. Aristide today remains in exile in South Africa but vows to return. The Haitian people demand he be allowed back and restored as their rightful and legal president.

With the US already stretched beyond its capacity in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere and currently condemned worldwide for flouting international law, inviolable Geneva Conventions it's a signatory to, and our own sacred Bill of Rights, why now Haiti. The country is very small [about 3 times the size of Los Angeles], has a population of about 7.5 million and is the poorest country in the Americas. Why did the US intervene with so much else on its plate? Think back to the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 when the US asserted its exclusive right to dominate the Americas. Now update to the present and a reinterpretation of that Doctrine has arrogantly expanded to cover the entire planet - and outer space. Think of it, the US will tolerate no rival and has now staked its claim [an exclusive franchise] to dominate all other nations and the oceans and the heavens. In an inversion or perversion of Woody Guthrie's great song for the people - "This Land Is Your Land" - a fitting anthem for US arrogance might be "This Earth is My Earth ... this earth [and the outer space above it] was made and now belongs to the USA." That includes Haiti, and sadly for its people that tiny, poor country lies much too close to the US The lament and aphorism of Mexican dictator [from 1876 - 1910] Porfirio Diaz who said......"Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the US" is also true for Haiti and all other countries in the region as well.

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