Contradiction soup stirred on Haiti

Shame on President Bush for not taking pre-emptive military action in Haiti. Whoops. We mean shame on President Bush for taking pre-emptive action in Iraq. Whoops. Those Democratic presidential candidates have caught themselves in quite the contradiction, haven't they, in their rush to criticize anything Bush.

Which explains the utter disconnect between Democrats and their media pals blasting the president for being too slow to deploy troops to Haiti, while deploring his rush to topple Saddam Hussein.

The U.S. Marines are in Port-au-Prince now that there is something constructive to do there.

With Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide gone, in part as a result of diplomatic efforts of the Bush administration - the same guys who are accused of not knowing diplomacy if they fell over it - international peacekeeping forces authorized by the United Nations can work to restore order.

``The problem for Haiti is that it's not oil-rich. It's a people of African descent. And they're not campaign contributors.'' Such over-the-top rhetoric from Rep. Kendrick Meek, a congressman from a Florida district heavy with Haitian immigrants, is predictable. Screwy conspiracy theories that the United States kidnapped Aristide are just plain silly.

But voters deserve more from presidential candidates. On Haiti, Bush was ``late, as usual,'' Kerry sniped at Sunday's New York Times/CBS debate. Edwards added, the president ``ignored Haiti the same way he's ignored most of the countries in this hemisphere.'' So under a President Edwards, the Bahamas and Canada will receive the same attention as Iraq, Iran and North Korea?

That Aristide had become the personification of the corruptive nature of power seems not to bother these two all that much.

Corrupt leaders, even those installed by the mechanisms of democracy, don't deserve the willy-nilly commitment of American troops for their own protection. Wannabe commanders in chief ought to know that.

Some more from Taranto's "Best of the Web" in the Wall Street Journal:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/

Kerry was also asked about the situation in Haiti, where the Bush administration ended a crisis yesterday by forcing the resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who illegitimately held on to power after his elected term ended. Here's the exchange between Kerry and Dan Rather:

Rather: Senator Kerry, President Bush has made it clear that the United States will be part of an international force going to Haiti. You've been critical of that action. Tell me what your beef is with what the president is doing.

Kerry: He's late, as usual. This president always makes decisions late after things have happened that could have been different had the president made a different decision earlier.

Bumiller: Senator Kerry, what would you have done in this situation?

Kerry: Well, first of all, I never would have allowed it to get out of control the way it did.

The New York Daily News reports that Kerry told the paper's editorial board, "I would intervene with the international community, and absent an international force, I'd do it unilaterally." This is in contrast to the Bush administration's multilateral approach; last night the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1529, authorizing an international force, including Americans and Frenchmen, to keep the peace in Haiti.

Now, this is the same John Kerry who has spent the past year carping about President Bush's "failed diplomacy" and "rush to war" in Iraq. Now suddenly in Haiti he's Mr. Unilateral Pre-emption.

Or is he? We searched Kerry's campaign Web site for statements on Haiti. There were 32 hits, most of which were false positives (Haiti is listed in a pull-down "country" menu on forms for contributing or subscribing). One was to an article from The Nation that cites something Kerry said about Haiti in the 1980s. Here's a complete list of Kerry's own statements about Haiti that appear on his Web site:

A Dec. 16, 2003, foreign-policy speech whose sole mention of Haiti was in this sentence: "And from Haiti to Bosnia, Bill Clinton placed America's might on the side of America's values while he expanded our circle of allies at the same time."

An undated AIDS plan that observes, "Programs in Haiti demonstrate that individuals from the community who are trained to recognize the symptoms of AIDS, TB, and malaria, can help support patients and administer drugs." (You have to click on "U.S. Leadership in the Battle Against HIV/AIDS" to see the Haiti reference.)

A Feb. 24, 2004, statement faulting the Bush administration: "The Administration has now finally realized that it must work multilaterally to broker a power sharing agreement between the parties--the only question is why they didn't do this sooner."

A Feb. 26 statement calling on President Bush to appoint failed Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham as a "special envoy" to Haiti.

Kerry claims that if he were president, he never would have let things get to this point, yet he had nothing to say about the crisis in Haiti--which, as CBS News notes, dates back at least to 2000, when Clinton was president and Aristide stole an election--until a mere five days before President Bush sent in the Marines.

How any sane American voter could ever vote Democrat is beyond me. Could you just imagine what life would be like if the current Black Congressional Caucus ever was in charge of running this country. And...the BCC does not give one hoot of care about the average Haitian citizen! I wonder when all the good American Black folks are going to come to their senses and dump these idiots that call themselves "Black" leaders! And.....enough already with this African-American stuff. Blacks that live in this country are Americans and nothing else. Shucks, all the immigrant groups that have migrated to the USA have dropped their hyphens long ago. Blacks are Americans and should assimilate as such! Their proud heritage will not be erased by dropping the hyphen. An effective assimilation of Blacks into American mainstream will be the real slayer of racism and prejudice! But worshipping morons like the BCC and the Democrat Party ain't gonna cut the mustard!

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