The reports of the devastation in Haiti are troubling. Though I oppose the United States intervening in the affairs of other nations, something about this one begs for as big and rapid a response as we can muster.For sure, there will be no saving Haiti. That place is a shit stain of a nation to begin with, and nothing, no amount of foreign aide is going to change the place. Some places are just better off not being, and Haiti is one of them.
But I am aware, regardless of the ills of the political entity, geography, culture and demographics, it is still a population of something like 10 million individuals and their suffering is real.
It really bothers me personally, makes me sick inside really, the thought of all those people dying by the minute, and knowing that the situation is so fucked up it really is too late to save the lives of those who were/are trapped in the rubble.
The manpower needed to save lives was needed then, not now, four days later, which is how long it takes to get anything packed up and shipped.
I guess all that's left is to do is ease the suffering of the survivors, so that we should do.
For now, we should be air dropping food and sending in some troops and equipment to help the immediate situation. But let us not linger and allow this tragedy to become an even bigger albatross around our collective necks.
But be wary of getting too involved and keep in mind that any investment made in rebuilding is going to be wasted. Any monetary relief will end up stolen. And the mistake that is Haiti will continue long after we have passed from this life.
8 comments:
Just another reminder of the cluster-f*%k that is French colonialism.
I certainly hope the French government and population are doing their part. What people don't seem to get who blame the futility on the Haitians is that, while it is usually impossible to establish the roots of new systems of values, political control and religious control in a new nation, it is and was possible for colonial powers to uproot and annihilate those systems, as colonial powers tend to do--they make any new system entirely dependent on the colonial core retaining a material presence, and when they go, the whole country goes (in a hand basket, of course). Any future Haitian regimes will just be filling the old corrupt, exploitative void of French colonial regimes--that's all that any Haitians were ever taught by the French. Remaining yet is our moral demands for these virtues of hard-work and civility, but those virtues have no historical basis. In effect, we're expecting the Haitians to become ahistorical, on the supposition that anyone can ever be ahistorical. What the Haitians require is an imperial regime. Their void of colonialism can no longer be filled by bumbling pretenders among their own ranks. They need to be invaded by a competent, ruthless foreign power who will give the Haitian people food and morality by the sheer astonishment of their power. From there, perhaps the Haitians can be trained to rule themselves, but why must we go on pretending that they're capable of something that we all know quite certainly they are not?
We go on purporting to advocate republican government because "it's the best system we know"--in other words meaning that there's a kind of comfortable calm and mundanity assured by the constant *trivial* chaos of democratic-style government as opposed to the infrequent *revolutionary* chaos of an aristocracy. But the result is that we bleed slowly but surely, over all that mundane peace- our very heart of passion boils over and bleeds for the marvels and moments of greatness democratic government suppresses so effectively.
a little too deep here for discussion,eh?
nice remarks btw.
Thanks. How much shall we bet that there's an attempt toward democratization when the relief efforts are through? No doubt spearheaded by our bumbling government.
Well, the French do have a pretty abysmal record in terms of the post-colonial fates of their holdings. Certainly compared with, say, the British. (I'd argue the Spanish and Portuguese don't fare much better, though.)
But there are many, many factors (internal, external, and natural) contributing to why Haiti has seemed so irredeemably fucked up. Among them the fact that from its inception, other (slaveholding) states in the region saw it as a threat to their status quo, and actively sought to keep it down and marginalized.
It was also one of the many places where the US supported a fairly nasty dictatorship in the name of holding off communism during the Cold War.
So, yeah, I'd say we have some responsibility for the place (and share that with a number of other countries.) That said, if I thought I knew how to nation-build there constructively, I think I'd be in another line of work.
Well put! Some of us tend to oversimplify for the sake of the denigration of the French.
If you taught about things like English law (historic, not today's), limited government, property rights, and such, you might be surprised how quickly things could improve there.
How is the east half of that island doing?
It's just occurring to me from my first comment that what I like about political activism, in a nutshell, is that you can say words like "colonization" and "clusterf&#k" in the same sentence. Which is why, when taken seriously, political activism is nothing but so much absurd frustration...
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