Haiti, a mess and possibly an opportunity?

It is with a heavy heart that Americans have learned from the Red Cross that 50,000 and likely more Haitians have been killed in a massive earthquake which struck the nation this past Tuesday. Haiti has been a troubled nation for this entire past decade with political turmoil bringing a 2004 coup that ousted the corrupt, but first legitimate president Aristide from office. In 2008 the nations inability to feed it's population lead to food crises and now this.

At each of the prior two incidents the US had some involvement in a way to say that we had a limited presence in Haiti during Aristide's ouster, and Aristide himself has accused the US of being behind the coup. Likely though, his ouster was simply a way for other politicians trying to reach an agreement with insurgents in the country who found reconciliation with Aristide to be impossible. During this time the US could have played a more active role in Haiti's future, but with the Iraq war drawing so much attention it was not politically or militarily wise to embark on what would have been painted as another nation buiding measure and it is likely the lack of will in America to pursue such an option would have made any attempt a failure. So the situation was allowed to continue and it did appear to get better, until the government's policies, as well as 4 hurricanes, led to a famine in 2008. During that time again America stood up and sought to help the poor Caribbean nation to feed it's people. Again this was an area were we could have at least built closer relations with the government in charge and began a sort of tutorial for the government on the ground so that they could finally catch up economically, and politically, with it's Caribbean neighbors. Again this was not to happen.

A great precedence for this was set in late 2004 when the tsunami hit Indonesia and killed nearly 130,000 people. The massive aid effort which was lead by the US opened up the nation to better relations with Washington and as we see today we have a much better and cooperative relationship with this nation and it's government as it has noticeably improved since the disaster. So we should seek to replicate this progress in Haiti.

After this recent devastation we as a nation will again seek to help out this perpetually downstruck nation and in truth, we should essentially seek to take over the current services of the government as they are clearly broken. From there we could again influence and seek to control and help this nation finally bring itself into the 21st century, but alas, Secretary Clinton has already stated the US will not seek to take over Haiti and it is likely we will give aid until this crisis has passed, than we will move on and forget about Haiti until the next disaster happens.

-Zach