One common pushback I get when talking to people about Haiti is something like:
Is your proposal for the world to not be involved and let Haiti sort itself out?
The very obvious answer there is "yes" but pushback to that is "what if the people of Haiti ask for help?" which is a question I don't have a great answer to. Obviously, if popular support is legitimate and not fabricated, is the answer that we should help them? Should other countries who don't have as disastorous of a record as the US help out?
And just to clarify another talking point, but the UN intervening is essentially the same thing as the US intervening, right? The latter is just a proxy for the former at this point, no?
"the people of Haiti" is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting. Which people? Every single Hatian? Or just the ones that would directly benefit from an intervention?
"Help" is doing a lot of heavy lifting too. Who could believe that the US is capable of helping another country? No, if the US "helps" it will be by installing extractivist ghouls at every level of government so they can pillage the land and people of even more resources. Biden himself said he wouldn't give a shit if Haiti sank into the ocean, and the country rightfully dislikes and distrusts the US. Tell them to watch Paw Patrol or something.
Okay I fully agree that the US has no business intervening in Haiti. That much is obvious.
But are we okay with other countries intervening? What if Cuba wanted to help?
Honestly I think for a military intervention to be justified, it has to be obvious to everyone that it's the right thing to do, and the outcomes have to be highly predictable.
If some other militarised nation thinks "hey, this 'humanitarian intervention' looks like a war of subjugation (or could plausibly be spun as one so we get a free casus belli)", and bombs the shit out of Cuba, then we have two humanitarian crises on our hands.
Well I'm not necessarily suggesting a hypothetical scenario where Cuba intervenes with military. There are other forms of intervention that don't involve military. The US often engages with them, granted their with ulterior motives and a goal of achieving some sort of strategic objective usually backed by western finance/capital.
So I guess that's what I'm asking. Would you all oppose all forms of intervention from a country like Cuba?
Oh, no, I can't think of a reason to oppose non-military aid from Cuba. It's essentially between peers, inasmuch as countries can be peers, right?
If Cuba were to decide to help Haiti, I would hope they did a good job of it. I imagine that theUS would take issue with any contact between Haiti and Cuba though. My judgment would depend on what the country did to help. I can think of a lot of countries that would just represent the blob's interests or intervene to create whatever's best for shareholders
you only need look back a decade to see what happened last time the US came in to 'help'
Right that's my question. How you decipher legitimate popular support vs. fabricated popular support and even if popular support is legitimate, should that make a difference?
Or another way to phrase this. Let's say all of the sudden, hypothetically of course because this would never happen, the US said "we're going to support Hamas because they were democratically elected and clearly have the popular support of people in Gaza." Would anti-interventionalist people say "yeah I guess that's fine" or continue to draw a hard line against it? Or what if it were the same situation in Bolivia and the US began supporting MAS?
Furthermore, are there other countries that can get involved?
There has been a running occupation of Haiti since fuxking 2004
And the US has intervened in Haiti over and over again for literal centuries
Foreign intervention is the whole fucking problem
Okay, but again, does "foreign intervention" mean exclusively the US or every country and all forms of intervention, both military and non-military?
Both, but particularly in Haiti's case the US has practiced extensive gunboat diplomacy to direct facilitate the latter.
Okay, so as I've asked on here before, would that include say, Cuba in the form of a non-military intervention?
Fair response. So really the answer to "Do you support any foreign intervention in Haiti?" is that it's A) Non-Military and B) Context dependent on who the country is?
This is a question of imperialism, and in examining history it becomes extremely obvious what constitutes imperialist vs anti-imperialist intervention.
“foreign intervention” is a specific term to mean military involvement and more often than not occupation
There's a long-running mass-uprising AGAINST foreign occupation .
Here's a little summary of Haiti's history of colonisation, revolution, re-colonization and ongoing struggle: https://youtu.be/Qeqt5UNz3sQ
Ever since the slave revolt the west has done nothing but fuck their shit up. Not doing anything would be helping.
:diaz-canel-troll: please liberate Haiti like :fidel-cool: did with Angola
Pretty much the only thing we, or anyone, could actually do to help Haiti is give them the capital that has been mercilessly extracted from that country since its inception.
Reparations essentially. Get a jobs program going with donated material and begin restoring the country to actual self sufficiency and building the people to what they should be.
As Americans we have a lot in our own house to get in order, and we should see to it that our oppressed masses get their justice before we can effectively begin exporting it to other countries. And boy, do we have a lot of wealth to redistribute!
