Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Buy the man a commercial airline ticket home, if that’s what he wants. Just don’t bother making it a round-trip ticket. That’s what we recommend be done in the case of ousted Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, who fled that long-suffering land two weeks ago as rebel forces were closing in for the kill, but now accuses the United States government with complicity in a coup plot.
Sadly, those accusations probably resonated through parts of the world where Americans are blamed for every evil — including in the halls of the U.S. Congress, where partisan Democrats and members of the Congressional Black Caucus cozy with Aristide have been calling for investigations into these obviously ludicrous accusations.
If the United States had done nothing to assist in his flight, Aristide probably would have been killed by the rebels. Then the United States would not only likely stand accused of complicity in a coup, but political assassination. By assisting his departure, after returning him to power following a coup 10 years ago, we stand accused by some nonetheless, proving that no good deed goes unpunished.
So if Aristide wants to go back, let him go — only without U.S. bodyguards or Marines to prop up his corrupt, economically backward and heartlessly incompetent regime.
Investigations are undoubtedly called for in this case — beginning with a probe into why members of the Congressional Black Caucus are so cozy with this petty, left-wing tyrant, and whether the Clinton White House was wise in propping up his failed regime, which multiplied, rather than meliorated, that nation’s sufferings.
Some possible clues to the reasons behind CBC’s complicity in Aristide’s rule were included in a recent Robert Novak column, which highlighted the sweetheart contracts and millions of dollars in lobbying money the Aristide regime has been spreading around Washington, while overseeing the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
We’re sure it will eventually be shown that Aristide fled his country voluntarily, after making such an irreparable mess of things that some Haitians could no longer live under his reign of error. We don’t know who or what will follow. But after more than a decade of Aristide, we know it couldn’t be worse.
