Watching Haiti

Billmon has two new posts up already about the coup in Haiti:

Another "Conspiracy Theorist"
Show Me the Way to Go Home

The first of those items includes a link to an article by economist Jeffrey Sachs: Don't fall for Washington's spin on Haiti Financial Times 02/29/04.

Sachs describes a deliberate de-stablization campaign waged by the Bush Administration against the elected government of Haiti. Aristide was elected president in 2000 and parliamentary elections were also held that year which were "successful, albeit flawed," in Sachs' words.

The Bush Administration withheld $500 million in emergency humanitarian aid until Aristide agreed to new elections for some parliamentary seats still disputed from 2000, in Sachs' account. But when he finally agreed, the opposition favored by the Bush team kept delaying the elections, and the aid was still withheld.

The opposition apparently features some pretty nasty characters. And Sachs asks some very relevant questions about just how extensive was the US involvement. Questions Congress should be asking with some urgency.

The Haiti events have some fairly large implications. One is that they look uncomfortably like what's been going on in Venezuela for two years. Another is that Republicans in power seem to have a reckless tolerance for compliant but undemocratic regimes; what happens in Haiti will be another test of how seriously the Bush team takes the human rights for which it claims to care so passionately in Iraq. And last but not least, US involvement in these kinds of regime changes can create long-term entanglements, especially in oil-rich countries like Iraq and Venezuela.

Oberleutnant zur See John Kerry (2 of 2)

(Cont. from Part 1) The prominent place given in this article to Kerry's combat experience and antiwar activism reminded me of something that I'd been thinking, about why conservatives seem to be foaming at the mouth about Kerry, a genuine war hero, protesting against the war in which he fought.

The reason why is summarized well in just that paragraph above. That's what the anti-Vietnam War movement was about. And that doesn't fit at all with the rightwing Republicans' preferred image of the war as a "noble cause" that was won on the battlefield but undermined by a bunch of protesting privileged college students and cowardly Democrats back home. War veterans like John Kerry and other like him were leaders in the antiwar movement. Soldiers in the military actively opposed the war: sometimes by openly protesting, some by deserting, some by actual acts of sabotage.

John Kerry the antiwar war hero opposing George Bush, who couldn't even complete his own service as Leutnant in the Texas Luftwaffereserve, could undo three decades of blowhard macho culture-war rhetoric about Vietnam and "the sixties." Oh, the possibilities.  As Kerry says, "Lasst ihn nur kommen!" [Bring it on]

Oberleutnant zur See John Kerry (1 of 2)

A Swiss friend of mine just sent me a link to an article in the Swiss Weltwoche newspaper on John Kerry. It's title Können diese Initialen täuschen? calls attention to the fact that his initials JFK are shared with another well-known American leader. The article is by Matthias Rüb, the Washington correspondent for the conservative German paper, the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung (FAZ).

I was particularly struck by the opening of the article, because it devotes its first seven paragraphs to Kerry's service in Vietnam and his active protests against the war. 

At the end of April 1971, more than a thousand Vietnam veterans, most of them with uniforms and medals,  protested all day long before the White House and the Congress for an immediate end to the war in Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of people came to the huge demonstrations on the Mall in Washington. Oberleutnant zur See John Kerry [it sounds too cool that way to translate], then 27 years old and a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War group, was one of the organizers and main speakers at the protest action against the war, which had long since been lost in the jungles of Vietnam as well as on the "homefront."  Just two days before the hearing [scheduled before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee] Kerry had learned that he was supposed to speak before the Committee. He prepared a text for a statement, and until shortly before the hearing was busy preventing an escalation between demonstrators adn the Capitol police. With the report Thomas Oliphant of the daily newspaper Boston Globe, Kerry fought his way through the throng around Congress and made it a little late to the room in which the Senators and camera teams had already taken their places. "Oh, shit," whispered Kerry to Oliphant as he spied dozens of TV cameras and microphones through the crack in the door, along with the Senators and the fully occupied observers' room. "Now get in there and become famous," Oliphant encouraged the nervous soldier in his olive-green uniform.

Regime Change in Latin America

Haiti: The more I hear about the coup in Haiti and the Bush Administration's actions in regard to it, the less I like it. Billmon is following the story, including the role of the odious Otto Reich.

Venezuela: La Opinion (USA) reports on the defiant stance Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez took this weekend in the face of an opposition recall campaign. (Regime change by recall ... this sounds oddly familiar): Tensión persiste en Venezuela 03/01/04.

Chávez declared, "Venezeula is not Haiti and Chávez is not Aristide, I'm not going to leave the government, I have the Constitution in my hand." He charged that Bush is backing the Venezuelan opposition. He threatened that if the US continues to interfere in Venezuela's internal affairs, they will cut off oil supplies to the US. "If this happens, they say that the oil tankers will boycott us; but if that happens, we will boycott their facilities in Venezuela."

Is Chávez's charge of American involvement in the attempt at regime change just a politician's Yankee-bashing bombast? James Galbraith (American Prospect online 12/17/02) on the effort to oust Chavez at the end of 2002:

Clearly the United States is involved. A Uruguayan politician blew the whistle on a request for help from the administration in support of a coup. In a desperate move, Bush issued a public statement on Dec. 13 calling for early elections. But why? Unlike Bush himself, Chavez was elected. There is no reason for him to step down other than the intransigent opposition of the Venezuelan upper classes. The "rebellion of the spoiled brats," they are calling it. Canada quickly distanced itself from Bush's statement.

Quick Takes: Iraq War and Britain, Iraq War and Australia, Schwarzenegger and the press

The Christian Science Monitor's news blog for 03/01/04 (New questions in UK about war's legality) has links to several articles indicating just how far Tony Blair's government was willing to stretch its interpretation of international law to go along with Bush and Rummy's adventure in Iraq. I'm afraid what little respect I've retained for Tony Blair is still draining away. It's really not inconceivable that some British officials may wind up in a war crimes prosecution before this is all over.

Australian blogger Tim Dunlop at The Road to Surfdom has links to the result of the Australian Parliament's investigation into prewar intelligence claims. Dunlop was amused at the restrained language the parliamentary report used to describe a serious failure of intelligence. For instance: "Given the gap between the above strategic analysis [on which the government relied in going to war] and the post war findings, it may be that [intelligence] agencies should examine whether they included all known factors in their analysis."

This is another example of the frivolous celebrity coverage that the press corps is giving Gov. Schwarzenegger: Star governor's dazzling charm opens doors San Jose Mercury News 02/29/04. Note the praise from Mississippi's Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, darling of the White Citizens Council: "He goes out of his way to be treated the same as everybody else, and I think people appreciate that. He's blended in, if that's the right word." I wonder if they discussed the Citizen Council's version of "compassionate conservatism."

And here's a sentence for those who still believe there's a Tooth Fairy and a Liberal Press: "The president might be the most powerful entity this side of heaven, but when it comes to star power, Schwarzenegger isn't far behind." I wonder if the reporter (Jim Puzzanghera) even bothered to rewrite the Republican press release.

Cult Groups and Guns

Charlie Eklund is back posting at The Other Shoe, although he's using his beta-blog The (Other) Other Shoe for his recent posts. He describes himself as libertarian, though it's clearly with a strong conservative and Republican cast.

Lately, though, he seems to be especially concerned with the freedom of people to have lots and lots of guns.  He made a special post to commemorate the raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) on the Branch Davidian compound.

As I commented at his post, there's no dispute that the raid was badly handled, not least by the ATF agents shooting off their mouths in public prior to the raid. I once heard Molly Ivins describe the clumsiness of the ATF and other involved in the raid. They thought they were in a testosterone contest, she said. But insane David Koresh was in the compound hearing voices from God, and he didn't know he was in a testosterone contest at all.

But for all the legitimate criticisms of the ATF raid, Koresh and his cult were a nasty bunch. Instead of going to the press and/or their attorneys when they got advance word of the impending raid, Koresh and his group prepared to shoot it out with the law. And, in fact, they killed an officer in the initial skirmish, which added a drastic new legal and emotional intensity to the situation.

David Koresh was a child-molesting, cop-killing, religious-fanatic cult leader. For most people, he's not a very appealing poster boy for a cause. The fact that Christian Right leaders like Pat Robertson treated him as a martyr should be very disturbing to anyone who's not willing to let violent cult groups run loose.

And can we seriously fight terrorism inside the United States if we allow a fanatical group like Koresh's to stockpile large stashes of weapons that they explicitly say they expect to use in an apocalyptic war?

I know the NRA zealously churns out endless propaganda on every aspect of the subject. But if the guns-for-everyone crowd has their way, fighting terrorist groups - and that's very much what the Branch Davidians were organizing and arming to become - will be impossible to do effectively.

California Politics: Schwarzenegger and Prop 57 - the *Chronicle* gets it

Wow! Right there on the front page, a news article in the San Francisco Chronicle sees past the conventional wisdom about Gov. Schwarzenegger's star power sweeping Propositions 57 (bonds) and 58 (reserves, borrowing restrictions) to victory. Props 57, 58 unite Dems and governor 03/01/04 (my empahsis)

Schwarzenegger has staked a big portion of his political capital on Propositions 57 and 58, which appear on Tuesday's ballot. After running a campaign based in part on threatening to "go over the heads" of the Democratic-led Legislature if it refuses his proposals, Schwarzenegger would undoubtedly lose stature in the Capitol if the measures fail.

That article states it correctly:  losing on Props 57 and 58 would look really bad for Schwarzenegger. But winning with broad bipartisan support is hardly a political miracle.

This article also shows how leading Democrats have been willing to let Schwarzenegger stage the Prop 57/58 campaign as a bipartisan love fest. I understand the Democrats' reasoning, mostly. To put it charitably, they're picking their fights and are avoiding having to make budget decisions with far-reaching implications while the state budget is battered by the effects of the Bush recession and job-loss recovery.

Put less charitably, they prefer to avoid uncomfortable decisions on the budget just like Schwarzenegger and the Republicans. But California may be in the midst of one of those "democractic moments" (as Jerry Brown calls them) where enough people are focused on political concerns that they may force their partisan leaders to step out of their comfortable routines for a while.

The fact that State Tresurer Phil Angelides has publicly opposed Prop 57 (though without mounting a campaign against it) in itself probably gives him considerable extra credibility for the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial primary as a guy who's willing to fight Schwarzenegger and the Republicans.