January
28th 2010
Haiti and the non-interventionist dilemma
Patroon

Posted under Interventionism

I wanted to post this debate last week from Antiwar.com about interventionism/non-interventionism in the wake of the Haitian earthquake. I can see the points that both Eric Margolis and Justin Raimondo are making.

Where I would come down on the interventionist side concerns both location and the lack of good options available. Haiti, unlike Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq and Kosovo, is not thousands of miles away from the U.S. it’s sits just 200-300 miles from Florida. The U.S. is the only nearby entity available that has both the equipment, the infrastructure and the lift to be able to facilitate large amounts of aid to in a mass casualty disaster, like it or not. Doing  nothing while those in Haiti beg for our assistance is grossly un-Christian and to criticize the military’s involvement reminds one of an old Onion headline: “Libertarian reluctantly calls Fire Department to put out fire in home”

However, Justin is right to point out that the U.S. tragedy in Somalia started out as a “humanitarian mission,” we were going to feed starving people. The problem was the people of Somalia were not starving just because of bad weather, they were starving because clan-based warlords were using food as a weapon in their struggle to control the country. Feeding people would inevitably require a political solution and trying to do so put U.S. troops at risk, unnecessarily as it turned out. One can also justify our presence in Afghanistan or Iraq or intervention in Kosovo as “humanitarian” as well.

What I feel makes Haiti different is both location and the suddenness and shock of what happened. It may very well be that shoddy construction practices contributed to thousands of deaths but this is also an area where earthquakes are more rare than hurricanes, one takes priority over the other. An earthquake is also not a political act or something cause by man. It has to be fixed by man.

An intervention that leads a joint U.S.-UN protectorate over the country to get it back on its feet (with the U.S. leaving shortly thereafter) would be the best of a lot of bad solutions. To do nothing could very well lead to a Camp of the Saints situation with Haitians by the millions either leaving Hispaniola by boat or flooding into the Dominican Republic putting that nation in grave danger. This would destabilize the entire Caribbean region and not to mention send millions of poor souls to travel by leaky boat through shark infested waters to get to the U.S. And do you think the first black, or at least half-black president, president is going to keep desperate Haitians from entering the U.S.? Neither did I. Of course we could declare Haiti the 51st state or a U.S. territory like Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands. But given the fact such status would still lead to mass migration, this time legalized mass migration, it’s also not a long-term solution either. Interventionism to help the Haitian people from this disaster may be the only way to prevent bigger calamities from taking place.

Again, non-interventionism is not nor should be an ideology with set guidelines and little red books. Sometimes you’ve got to be flexible in extreme circumstances, especially if there are bigger problems that non-interventionism cannot solve.

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8 Comments »

8 Responses to “Haiti and the non-interventionist dilemma”

  1. Weaver on 28 Jan 2010 at 3:06 am #

    411-1 vote, and Dr. No votes the 1.

    He’s probably in the right here (voting to “express condolences”), but this just gave me a chuckle.

  2. Bede on 28 Jan 2010 at 3:25 am #

    Regarding the UnChristian bit, saying it’s wrong not to help them rings more of Enlightenment universalism (the “universal brotherhood of man”) than it does of medieval Christianity – where one’s primary obligations were to one’s family, kith and kin, ancestors, and neighbors.

    The problems of the Haitians are largely their own doing. (The 7.1 earthquake in San Francisco in 1989 killed about 60 people.) Our intervening is only making matters worse – but even worse yet, as Patroon points out, is allowing these deeply flawed people to immigrate to the U.S. Their country is and always has been a mess. Do we want to bring the architects of this disaster to our cities? Why do we need to be the Third World’s savior? Send them a little money and medicine, and let them take care of themselves. Invade the world; invite the world; just name the location: Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Haiti.

    As I said in a previous post, Chris Roach hits the nail on the head:

    What’s happening in Haiti is very sad.  But the images coming from there are utterly predictable. The outpouring of global charity at most is treating the symptoms; the causes remain, and this mass death will be repeated elsewhere in similar countries for similar reasons.  Let’s face it:  Haiti’s chief problem is that it’s filled with Hatians.  The mass death toll from this event is a consequence chiefly of that fact.  Its government, economy, construction practices, and every single aspect of society is hellish, not so different from what prevails in Somalia or Afghanistan, and it’s been that way pretty much forever. If Haiti were filled with Swiss or Americans, very few people would have died.  But whenever a big disaster hits the Third World it’s followed by mass extermination.  By contrast, the 7.1 earthquake in San Francisco in 1989 killed about 60 people.  These facts are not coincidences.  When these horrible things happen, I tend to think: one more super unlucky consequence of living in the Third World, none of which will be changing any time soon, because the foundation of those societies, their people, are not changing any time soon.

    In addition to understandable sympathy and charity in the short term, is the question of what to do with our own little corner of the globe.  If the Third World is the way it is not because of a lack of resources, but rather its people, as well as institutions that reflect the values, prejudices, and shortcomings of such people, why do we want millions and millions of such people to come to our country, which is run very differently and does not have Third World problems, until fairly recently?   This is a purposeful policy choice by our leaders who are either short-sighted or devilish themselves.

  3. Dylan Hales on 28 Jan 2010 at 4:56 am #

    There is a reason Haiti is a failed state and throwing money at them will not change that.

  4. Weaver on 28 Jan 2010 at 2:21 pm #

    Bede,

    Countenance blogmeister took a similar position to Patroon’s:

    Because if Haiti doesn’t “build back up” (so to speak) to where it was before the quake, then something will need to be done to help the Haitian population of 10 million.

    Can you guess what that something would be? I’ll give you a hint: Our own Haitian population would increase by 10 million.

  5. S.L. Toddard on 28 Jan 2010 at 2:27 pm #

    “Again, non-interventionism is not nor should be an ideology with set guidelines and little red books”

    I agree with this sentiment 100%. And I cannot find it in myself to condemn efforts to aid the Haitians. I am wary, as is Dr. Paul, of turning Haiti into a US military protectorate though. The question is how to aid the Haitians while preventing them from flooding our shores and disallowing the US gov’t from turning Haiti into a client-state.

  6. Bede on 28 Jan 2010 at 3:44 pm #

    In principle, I’d say: do nothing.

    But if the only two options are

    (1) let the Haitians invade the U.S.

    or

    (2) occupy Haiti

    I’d reluctantly choose option 2, but wearily so because “invade the world” rarely is unaccompanied by “invite the world.”

    Regardless, whatever aid we give them, it should only be accompanied by mandatory birth control (depo provera, IUDs, vasectomies, etc.).

  7. Haiti, State of Nature, and Birth Control | Conservative Heritage Times on 28 Jan 2010 at 5:22 pm #

    [...] the current debate about Haiti (here, here, and here), I would like to add a few [...]

  8. Haitian Invasion of the U.S. to Commence? | Conservative Heritage Times on 10 Feb 2010 at 2:51 am #

    [...] our concerns at CHT about a possible Camp-of-the-Saints invasion from Haiti, apparently Haitians are now [...]

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