TheMillerCircle.org

Howard Zinn and Haiti are the short-cuts to carnal knowledge of America. You learn more about America’s empire policies by studying Howard Zinn’s life and works and Haitian history than you do by reading from almost any other source. It’s a quick lesson in the theory that you learn what a country is like by watching its past behavior rather than  listening to its rhetoric or reading the documents that celebrate and justify its glorious beginning. I have been refreshing my knowledge of both Howard Zinn and Haiti recently, as Zinn’s sudden death and the devastating earthquake that destroyed much of Haiti hit us like twin Tsunamis to our frontal lobes.  Zinn is gone and Haiti needs to be rebuilt: a void coupled to a nightmare. Zinn has been deceased only two weeks and people are already asking “what would Howard Zinn do?” He is surely the best of all templates for America’s future and the never ending need to evolve the country into a problem solver rather than a problem creator. Today, America is in search of a tide that can lift all boats.

In the last article that Zinn wrote for The Nation, in recognition of Obama’s first year in the White House, he wrote “I think people are dazzled by Obama’s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president–which means, in our time, a dangerous president–unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.” If Obama’s presidency is going to become meaningful, it will get there only by immense pressure that forces him into action of the proper kind. Right now Obama acts as if he either has no constituency, or he assumes he can count on support from the left because they are without any other candidate. This is the most dangerous attitude that any President can have. Even Bush understood that you have to energize the base and that is precisely what Obama doesn’t do. Massachusetts should have convinced him of that. The indifference Obama shows for his natural constituency, the group that got him elected, leaves him free to practice the fine art of triangulation.  But, his efforts at that game, while making him feel good about trying to generate bipartisan support, puts him at a huge disadvantage and so far he has demonstrated that he doesn’t have the political skills to avoid entrapment by the scheming Republicans who know how to play the game much better than he does. Obama needs to understand that the Republicans want him to fail in everything he does and they have already succeeded in trapping him on any number of issues, including his design of the stimulus package (too many tax deductions and not enough stimulus dollars delivered to the right places: he badly missed the mark on that one and now the Republicans are accusing him of not keeping the unemployment levels down lower–something created by too many tax deductions in the stimulus package. The list of these blunders derived from ignoring his constituency goes on and on and certainly includes the health care bill and the weak program for reforming our financial system). Obama now faces the ruination of his Presidency if he doesn’t start delivering on the public demands for a better, more directional government–triangulation needs to cease. Maybe we need a constitutional amendment banning triangulation. It might save his Presidency.

So, my advice for Obama is simple: Read Howard Zinn and behave as though you are moving for the interests of your constituency and stop being a coward about your decision making. Take advantage of the fact that you have a large majority in both houses and force the Senate to change the voting procedures so that only a majority is required to pass the legislation you want to sign. That’s how Bush got his tax deductions for the wealthy through the Senate. You probably also need to make some changes in your White House staff, including a remake of your economic team. When you are done with that, read more about Haiti and steer our ship of state in a direction that helps rather than exploits the indigenous people of other countries just because business interests tell you that exploitation is profitable. If you are going to go down swinging, at least start swinging the bat in the right direction. The people that insist on supporting America’s business enterprise first are not among your constituents. They didn’t vote for you. They are plotting and lobbying against you. Declare war against those who want to destroy your presidency. Voters like to see someone look strong and reassuring and you are one without the other. You have great communication skills, but you are trying to communicate with the wrong people.

I first began to learn about Haiti by reading Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present,” where, in chapter one, he describes the devastation that Columbus brought on Hispaniola, the name he had given to the island that is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. A historical account of the genocide and devastation he brought to Hispaniola was provided by a young Spanish priest (las Casas) who wrote two volumes on the carnage and suffering of the indigenous people  he witnessed on the island.  When he arrived on Hispaniola he wrote [from Zinn's history book, chapter 1] “there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians, so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable person can hardly believe it.” Zinn goes on to describe how other historians have written about Columbus and acknowledged his actions against the indigenous people, even describing it as genocide, yet have concluded that Columbus was a great man because he was a great seaman.
If you now fast forward through the heroic revolution against French enslavement in 1804, the establishment of a free nation, only the second in the Western hemisphere to throw off the shackles of colonialism, followed by absurd French reparations imposed in 1825 that took Haiti 122 years to pay off, a trade embargo and later invasion by America, American backed dictatorships and our support of brutal terrorist mercenaries and the abduction of the democratically elected President Aristide in 2004 (A short summary of those events can be viewed here). An excellent book on Aristide’s abduction by the Bush administration is Randall Robinson’s “An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.” After a rather depressing record of American exploitation and manipulation of Haiti and the Haitian people, you arrive at the doorstep of the massive earthquake a month ago.
Now we have finally heard from the G-7 that Haiti’s international debt may be forgiven. If this actually happens (I tend to doubt this story as nations now have a habit of verbally committing funds for PR purposes, but never coming up with the $ that are promised, but I hope I am pleasantly surprised and wrong about this), the country might get back on its feet more quickly than one would otherwise predict. Naomi Klein has an article in The Nation which describes how Haiti should actually be considered as a creditor not a debtor nation. When Aristide was President, he calculated that the French owed Haiti $21 billion for reparations from the illegal, draconian and enforced reparations that the French imposed on Haiti, under intimidation. Many international lawyers believe that Haiti has a good case. Naomi Klein talks about multiple sources of debt that Haiti could rightly claim against France, the U.S. and international monetary system and the industrialized world in general. They include a slavery debt (French reparation bill under King CHarles X); a dictatorship debt from 1957 to 1986, when the Duvaliers (father and son) put the country into deep debt, but put that borrowed money into their own bank accounts, yet Haiti is still looked upon as owing that money; A climate debt, championed by several countries at the Copenhagen meeting, in which wealthy countries have created the conditions for  global climate change, which poorer countries are not able to address effectively for lack of resources. Haiti at this time, more than any other in its history, needs to put all of its resources into rebuilding the country, not meeting its debt payments. If Obama would learn one lesson from Haiti and lead the charge for debt forgiveness, bring Aristide back (he is presently in South Africa but banned from living in the Western hemisphere) to lead and organize the reconstruction effort, Haiti could finally achieve what it deserves: full independence and a fully independent and functional democracy, free from impoverishment through sweat shop labor and free to develop the infrastructural methods, such as a cement plant (they once had one, but it was demolished so that Haiti would become a consumer of cement through imports). Haiti is our problem and a problem for the French and Canadians. For Obama it’s another test of his leadership to see if he can use his visual system to appreciate and help eradicate the poverty that we helped impose on the Haitian people. Where we should have admired them for their revolutionary zeal, we participated in the re-enslavement of the people of Haiti through our invasions and our conspiracy against the forces of democracy in that country. We oppose democracy in Haiti for the same reason we have opposed it in every other country in which we have intruded (mostly those in the Western hemisphere),  because we think it’s bad for business and results in people like Aristide getting elected and when it happened, we consipred to topple his government, kidnap him and remove him from all contact with his country. Haiti is where Obama could make his first mark of separation with the policies we have practiced against Haiti since 1804. But will he?
RFM