[204] in libertarians
Haiti discussion
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (damartin@ampere.mit.edu)
Tue Sep 13 18:05:31 1994
Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 18:00:46 -0400
From: damartin@ampere.mit.edu
To: seborn@MIT.EDU
Cc: libertarians@MIT.EDU
>Though not a Libertarian myself, I've been reading Vernon Imrich's
>postings through the mailing list. Could anyone with ideas please post
>any possible non-military solutions to end the terror campaigns of the
>Haitian government and restore legally elected authorities? It would
>be great if we could write the resolution and do something, but I
>haven't seen concrete ideas for answers yet.
This is a good point. It is easy to attack a plan; it is
harder to come up with a better solution. Here are some ideas. I don't
necessarily advocate them, but they can give people something to flame
about. :-)
1) Have some snipers assassinate the military junta leaders. Or drop
a big bomb on them when they are all meeting together. Have Aristide
arrive a few hours later and take over. This is sort of illegal, but
if it works, you can get away with it. No politician up for
re-election in a month would suggest impeaching a president who could
say he managed to avoid risking American lives and only killed the bad
guys. Of course, if it doesn't work, Clinton will be in big trouble.
2) Figure out how much we would spend invading Haiti, use the money to
buy machine guns and a lot of ammo, give them to Aristide's supporters
in Haiti, and tell them to overthrow the military themselves. If they
want freedom, they should be willing to fight for it. The US has done
this a lot to one degree or another in the past. Many would say it
only made things worse, but at least no Americans die in the process.
3) Do nothing whatsoever. If the Haitians really want to be free, they
will overthrow the government themselves. It is hard to see people
suffer without helping them, but do we really have the right to tell
other countries how to run their societies?
The problem is that the real problem isn't restoring Aristide
to power. That is fairly easy for the US. The real problem is ensuring
that 3 years later you don't have the same situation again. There is
no guarantee that Aristide will respect human rights, and even if he
does, he won't be president forever. The only way to be sure is to
have a society where most people support democratic ideals, human
rights, etc. This is hard to do. The classic example of this is
Germany between WWI and WWII. Even though the allies won WWI, they
didn't follow up the military victory correctly. This allowed Hitler
to come to power, and the allies had to fight WWII. I don't want my
friends in the US military going off and dying unless there is some
plan to ensure that Haiti doesn't fall right back into a dictatorship
as soon as we leave.
-David Martin
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| David A. Martin |
| Research Assistant, MIT Vision Chip Group |
| |
| MIT Room 39-617 30 Adrian Street |
| (617) 253-0713, fax:(617) 253-0062 Somerville, MA 02143 |
| damartin@mtl.mit.edu (617) 776-3837 |
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