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Home  At Length When Governments Fail
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When Governments Fail |
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Written by James Preston Allen
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Friday, 22 January 2010 |
I started to write this editorial with the rains pouring down and the water running over my sidewalk, wondering if my choices were going to be sandbags or a boat? At times like this, I surmise that our cities were designed for drainage during the dry years and not for the 17-year California deluge or the 100-year flood. Just the same, even though the TV news likes to make a big deal out of our weather, (when we have anything that rises to the level of Jackie Johnson’s skin-tight sweaters), our passing climatic concerns rarely rise to the level of being an international crisis. But with a few more hours of persistent rain, we would all see how woefully inadequate Los Angeles is engineered.
It has been said many times that the only true authority government has, “ is to do for the people that which they cannot do for themselves.” One man can’t build a bridge or pay for a highway and no individual, no matter how wealthy can afford or would invest in certain infrastructures, like streets and sidewalks, that would be used by all either for cheap or free. This, contrary to some common beliefs, is the very communalized nature of government, no matter which “economic” system they adhere. Yet, as often is the case, governments fail in this mission out of lack of vision, political will, or by corruption and greed. In the end, it is the people that suffer.
Such is the example of Haiti today, the poorest of all the nations in the Western Hemisphere. It is precisely at the time of natural disasters that governments are tested on the grounds of doing for their people and we have seen in recent years plenty of examples of failure. The 2004 earthquake that caused the tsunami in Indonesia affecting the countries around the Bay of Bengal or the hurricane that caused huge mudslides in Honduras have all caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and billions in economic damages. And what hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans is less about the suffering of man at the hands of “God,” as Pat Robertson would have it, than it was about the stupid failures of government to either prepare or respond. The current example of this failure is Haiti no less.
That religious born-again idiots like Robertson would blame an alleged pact with the devil for Haiti’s plight over the last 200 years is amazing in that it deflects and writes off the role that policies of successive administrations have had on the island nation. This includes the Bush White House role in the 2004 coup d’etat that removed the popular Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who has spent the last six years in South Africa.(Bush's father backed an earlier coup against Aristie in 1991.) He recently announced that he was ready to return and suffer with his own people through this crisis– something I doubt President Bush would ever do.
Speaking of our Bush-league president, it seems very odd and completely understandable how President Obama would attempt once again to practice “bi-partisanship” appointing both former Presidents Clinton and Bush Junior to oversee the American aid mission to our poorest neighbor. Is it just me or did Bush sound as clueless the other day about the Haitian situation as he did about New Orleans after the hurricane? Clinton on the other hand could actually talk in specifics. He seemed like he actually cared and had thoughtful responses. However, five days after the 7.0 Haitian earthquake, food, water and medical supplies were just barely getting to the devastated neighborhoods of Port au Prince. Even now there are people still being pulled from the rubble of destruction. The death toll is mounting and the government of Haiti is almost nowhere to be seen.
Moving swiftly into this power vacuum, America once again plays hero like Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill or is it like the time in 1915 when President Woodrow Wilson sent the US Marines to pacify Haiti and stayed for the next 19 years? We always seem to be telling everybody else how to run their country, but can’t seem to make ours work so well. It always seems like such an honorable and Christian thing to help out those in need after a calamity? But wouldn’t it be grand if we didn’t wait until the next disaster to help out? Haiti has been suffering for so many years before this latest disaster, both politically and economically, but all that our government seems to do is to take advantage of their poverty wages and corrupt politicians. Aristide's plan for a minimum wage was one of thereasons for the 1991 coup. Then when it really counts to have a real, and not a shadow government, there’s nobody there except good ol’ Uncle Sam.
This is not by mistake and yet the cost of having an empire is that the imperial power always ends up paying for things when they start to fall apart. How long will Haiti be another ghetto in the American empire? How long will we allow democracy to fail and at what price?
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