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Its becoming increasing apartment that simply keep the Haitians from starving is not going to be a permanent or ideal solution. As most of their capital was destroyed they also need to engage in things such as rebuilding and reforming their government. The problem is they do not have the capacity to do either, neither the machines, resources, or technical know-how is present within the country. Also their government is for all practical purposes destroyed, the President was sleeping in the airport on waiting benches, their government builds are destroyed, many staff and officials are dead, there's no way to communicate with other aspects of the government such as police or military, and there's no way to stage an election.
In the face of all this many Haitians are calling for the US to take over the country, permanently. Thoughts?
washingtonpost.com
Its becoming increasing apartment that simply keep the Haitians from starving is not going to be a permanent or ideal solution. As most of their capital was destroyed they also need to engage in things such as rebuilding and reforming their government. The problem is they do not have the capacity to do either, neither the machines, resources, or technical know-how is present within the country. Also their government is for all practical purposes destroyed, the President was sleeping in the airport on waiting benches, their government builds are destroyed, many staff and officials are dead, there's no way to communicate with other aspects of the government such as police or military, and there's no way to stage an election.
In the face of all this many Haitians are calling for the US to take over the country, permanently. Thoughts?
washingtonpost.com
How does some area of land become a territory of the US?
Can they ask to be accepted as such?
I don't no ANYTHING about this.
And your spell-check needs updating.
In my opinion, we should start holding the European powers responsible for the destruction their colonialism caused in the 1700s-1900s around the world. This mess in Haiti was not caused by the U.S., and we are not ethically or morally responsible to solve it.
Who colonized Haiti, destroyed their national resources, and brought hundreds of thousands of Africans there to work as agricultural and household slaves?
That's who should pay to fix Haiti.
In my opinion, we should start holding the European powers responsible for the destruction their colonialism caused in the 1700s-1900s around the world. This mess in Haiti was not caused by the U.S., and we are not ethically or morally responsible to solve it.
France and Spain are. France and Spain should ante up, financially, to rebuild Haiti's infrastructure and teach the leaders of Haiti to govern democratically.
If you look at UK colonialism, at least the brits left their former colonies with the ability to self-govern. The French and Spanish, almost never. They raped, pillaged, stole, and destroyed, and when they were done leeching away a land's resources, they gave it back to the natives who'd been kept illiterate and in bondage for generations.
With our international institutions the way they are, I don't think this is feasible. Right now we have nations with terrible human rights records serving in the United Nations. I don't see how any other agency or UN commission will be any better.
my god, you want the french to do it?
This is supposed to be humanitarian aid, we can help the people, but ultimately, it needs to be the people who step up and fix their country. We can do things to help them but we should not do it for them. Low-interest loans, private industry loans, etc. are all options. Going in and doing it for them is not.
Who colonized Haiti, destroyed their national resources, and brought hundreds of thousands of Africans there to work as agricultural and household slaves?
That's who should pay to fix Haiti.
In my opinion, we should start holding the European powers responsible for the destruction their colonialism caused in the 1700s-1900s around the world. This mess in Haiti was not caused by the U.S., and we are not ethically or morally responsible to solve it.
France and Spain are. France and Spain should ante up, financially, to rebuild Haiti's infrastructure and teach the leaders of Haiti to govern democratically.
If you look at UK colonialism, at least the brits left their former colonies with the ability to self-govern. The French and Spanish, almost never. They raped, pillaged, stole, and destroyed, and when they were done leeching away a land's resources, they gave it back to the natives who'd been kept illiterate and in bondage for generations.
The problem with this equation is that in order for people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they require bootstraps.
Haiti was so decimated of all resources, and the former slaves who put themselves into leadership were so ill-prepared for that role (thanks to their French owners), that the likelihood of Haiti salvaging itself is minimal.
This is like requiring an illiterate woman who got pregnant at 12 and has zero skills to get off of welfare and take care of her kids. She may get off welfare, but she's always going to struggle with the limitations of her situation. In the case of families like this, literacy skills, financial skills, hell--even cooking and cleaning and childcare skills--have to be taught.
Haiti was so impoverished, corrupt, and hopeless BEFORE the quake that to presume that they have the capacity to rebuild, even if we wrote them a blank check, is ridiculous. It's not just money they need, but EVERYTHING.
Haiti literally needs to be dismantled and reconstructed from the ground up. I look at Haiti the way I look at dismal failing schools that have to be taken over by a state agency and reformed.
I dont know where your getting this idea from. We left Cyprus India Palestine and Zimbabwe in one hell of a mess (not that we didn't try to redeem ourselves in the case of the last one).
I agree about France and Spain but America also shares some of the responsibility for backing the Duvalier dictatorships (sometimes by sending in troops).
The first thing they could do is cancel some of the debt acquired under Duvalier. Why should the Haitians pay debts built up by a government installed and sustained by foreigners?
I hate to sound callous, but if that's the case, maybe they don't DESERVE to survive as an independent nation. The whole point of becoming independent is to actually act independently. If you need constant help to get anything done, then you obviously cannot handle your independence. If not for the worldwide economic meltdown, I'm sure someone would have been happy to make them a colony. Maybe that's what they need.
Have you actually read ANYTHING about the history of Haiti? The French killed off the natives, brought in millions of African slaves, and pillaged the natural resources. When the Haitian slave revolution ended, the French left, and the former slaves ended up running things. Never mind that these former slaves were completely illiterate, had almost zero family structure thanks to the way the plantations functioned, and were completely out of their league.
It would be like putting a 6-year-old into office as president and then blaming him when he f'ed up.
Haiti isn't capable of governing itself, it's people are not qualified and any "aid" that is offered is going to be extremely long-term, if not permanent because they cannot, at least for generations, take on the responsibility themselves.
I agree, but I think that the goal of taking over Haiti should be to CREATE self-governance, and then eventually turn over the reins.
And, I think France and Spain should be responsible for doing this, since their empire-building created the problem. They have a moral obligation to engage in "nation building."
Ironic, don't you think?
Have you actually read ANYTHING about the history of Haiti? The French killed off the natives, brought in millions of African slaves, and pillaged the natural resources. When the Haitian slave revolution ended, the French left, and the former slaves ended up running things. Never mind that these former slaves were completely illiterate, had almost zero family structure thanks to the way the plantations functioned, and were completely out of their league.
It would be like putting a 6-year-old into office as president and then blaming him when he f'ed up.
Good luck on that. Once Haiti declared themselves independent of French rule, they were, in essence, saying they could handle it from there on. It would be like America declaring itself independent from England, then asking England to keep giving them money.
You seem to think that somehow, Haiti *DESERVES* to be an independent state.
It's proven that, at least at the moment, it cannot handle it. It needs someone else to step in, or it needs to be dissolved entirely and a different state set up that is no longer Haiti.
You don't make political decisions based on "oh, those poor people had bad things happen to them, therefore they DESERVE all this stuff",
but on what they can independently earn. Right now, they haven't done it.
Leave Obama out of this.......:mrgreen:
So, in your worldview, the slaves should have stayed quietly on the plantations as property?
SERIOUSLY?
This is based upon the naive but typical hard-right opinion that people are born capable of earning independence, and if they don't, it's because they don't deserve to be independent. When, in point of fact, people have to be educated to be capable of self-governance. Even our founding fathers recognized that.
You may well be capable of self-governance because you grew up in a country where you received an adequate education and had some degree of family stability.
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