Protecting animals is very important indeed, but upon review of the news on and off campus, I cannot help but be slightly more interested in a little country of 8 million currently in the midst of a civil war that will most likely result in a coup d’état, and will mark the end of the rule of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Today is the 23rd day of rebel insurrection against the “democratic” government of Aristide. He won the popular vote of Haiti’s first democratic election in 1991 immediately after the former dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier, was forced to leave because pro-democratic sentiments became increasingly popular.

At the time of his election in 1991, Aristide was one of the Western Hemisphere’s most popular leaders, snatching 67 percent of the popular vote from a field of a dozen candidates.

Eight months later, he was a victim of a successful coup lead by the Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH) and was forced into exile in the United States. In 1994, the United States sent 20,000 troops to reinstate Aristide. Forced to step down in 1995 due to constitutional term limits, Aristide hand-picked a puppet, Rene Preval, who he controlled until the next election in 2000.

Over the following four years, Aristide became increasingly unpopular due to rumors of corruption, alliances with the drug trade and cruel and unusual punishment against those thought to oppose him. In spite of this, he curiously won the 2000 popular vote in an election that reeked of foul play. The international community thereby suspended millions of dollars of aid (a boycott that continues today).

As The New York Times says, Aristide, “a diminutive, bespectacled priest who once fired the hearts of Haitians to pursue freedom, is himself being called a dictator.”

International groups have accused him of violently stifling dissent with his police force (a mere 5,000 strong), assassinating two critical journalists and injuring scores of others who have protested against him.

I must note here, before I go any further, that I do not want to polarize this issue and separate one party as “good” and the other as “bad” because, as any Haitian scholar will tell you, there will be no winners of this ongoing battle. Haiti is a very poor country where the plight of millions depends on a few elite citizens, a few thousand militia-men and the international community.

It is the latter that I place my hope on. The rebellion, which has suffered more than 50 casualties, is being led by Louis-Jodel Chamblain, the right-wing leader of the FRAPH militia that was responsible for the 1991 coup and terrorizing Haitians while the military junta ruled between 1991 and 1994.

It is the international community—more precisely the United States—that has a responsibility to clean up a problem it helped create.

Where does the United States stand on this issue? In the other room, with its hands in other crooked cookie pots. The media coverage of the events in Haiti has concentrated only on the domestic causes of Haitian problems when U.S. foreign policy has done more to injure the people of Haiti than both Duvalier and Aristide.

Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated, “There are willing nations that would come forward with a police presence to implement that political agreement that the sides come to.”

Right about now, I wish I had Powell on speed dial. This is one of those moments where you just cannot sit down and let sweet, sweet apathy mainline and sedate. The United States does not have a great track record in Latin America, and especially in Haiti, as history clearly shows. We will not succeed in installing yet another government.

Aristide and Chamblain are not men to sit down to tea and compromise; they are men who vehemently believe in their politics (albeit destructive politics).

Sadly, I believe the only outside presence that will be respected is a band of 20,000 more troops to instate yet another puppet. Currently, the United States has no plans to send troops, only officials to address the “humanitarian crisis,” in Powell’s words.

All the while, millions of people are starving, systematically rejected political amnesty in the United States and suffering due to the suspension of foreign aid. This is what matters—the people. And any fool can draw a straight line between the unfounded suffering in Haiti and the United States foreign policy that has used “political instability” as its reason for denying the right to the basics.

And you think you have it bad, you and your prescription drug problems.

Why am I writing about this? Simple—people’s lives are more important than horses or cows. We are all global citizens, humans first. We have a responsibility to know what is going on outside Macalester because we can do something about it. Please vote in ’04.