US troops 'made Aristide leave'

From correspondents in Paris

March 1, 2004

HAITIAN leader Jean Bertrand Aristide was taken away from his home by US soldiers, it was claimed today.

A man who said he was a caretaker for the now exiled president told France's RTL radio station the troops forced Aristide out.

"The American army came to take him away at two in the morning," the man said.

"The Americans forced him out with weapons.

"It was American soldiers. They came with a helicopter and they took the security guards.




"(Aristide) was not happy. He did not want to be taken away. He did not want to leave. He was not able to fight against the Americans."

The RTL journalist who carried out the interview described the man as a "frightened old man, crouched in a corner" who said he was the "caretaker of the residence".

Aristide fled Haiti today in the face of an armed revolt. The United States has ordered Marines to the Caribbean state to help restore order.

 http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1274&storyid=973655

Some articles in Dutch with in the some article and comments links to English articles:

aristide ontvoerd?
 http://indymedia.nl/nl/2004/03/17195.shtml

VS achter coup op Haiti?
 http://indymedia.nl/nl/2004/02/17169.shtml

 http://www.indymedia.be/news/2004/03/81238.php

Why would the US depose Aristride? Getting into another messy internal conflict is hardly likely to enhance Bush's re-election prospects, and Haiti doesn't fit in as a target in the War on Terror. While in the past the US had reason to overthrow governments as part of the Cold War, thats over and Haiti doesnt fit into any wider conflict. The only bonus to them would be stopping refugees. It just doesn't make sense.

America has always had it in for democratic governments who have the temerity to not elect pro-business candidates to power - witness the attacks on 1970s Chile or 1980s Nicaragua. It's often called 'The threat of a good example'.

Aristide is one such example, in that he was elected by Haiti's poor, rather than the business community. After the 1990 coup, by a bunch of Fort Benning graduates no less, the US sat on him for about 3 years before restoring him, after denouncing him in public and imposing on him a bunch of conditions, including making him appoint a businessman as vice-president. They probably wouldn't have bothered restoring him to power at all, if it wasn't for the fact that refugees were regularly being washed up on the shores of Florida and it was clear to absolutely everybody on the planet, even the US public, that the coup leaders were a bunch of mass murdering scumbags.
Killing Hope, by William Blum, is a decent primer on the US attitude to Aristide vis a vis the first coup:  http://members.aol.com/bblum6/haiti2.htm

This latest coup is probably the result of an Iraq-style change of policy - instead of being passively hostile to Aristide, the US actively took steps to initiate 'regime change'. It's what this misnamed 'War on Terror' is all about - after 9/11, the US public is now much less willing to act as some sort of brake on US imperialism. Scary times are ahead.

Did it make sense to overthrown the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, in favour of a 'friendly' dictatorship lead by Augusto Pinochet ?

The Other September 11th
 http://amigaphil.planetinternet.be/cgi-bin/show.cgi?nowar24b


War on Terrorism: Depicting a source of the highest threats to the world
 http://amigaphil.planetinternet.be/usa.html

But why the support for Astride? He isn't entirely innocent either, under his reign people were toutured and murdered, and there was also allegations of vote rigging in the 2000 election.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3379135.stm