Haiti (Catch all)

[Rex Brynen]

And the effect of more Haitians is to be precisely what, do you think? Other than further deforestation of an already largely deforested country, said deforestation leading to top soil erosion and the killing of fish on the coast, said deforestation caused by the trees being turned into charcoal, so that the already excessive numbers of Haitians (excessive for what their third of the island can support) can cook, I mean.

Further, what improvement would you expect increased but still limited opportunities for education to do for Haiti, other than to make that fraction talented enough to qualify for the education high-tail it for a better place? Yes, they'll send remittances back, for a generation or so. But after that, the place will be the poorer for its more talented people having left, and the remittances will have stopped.

Deforestation tends to also be an issue of poor access to alternative energy supplies (including sparse rural electrification), land tenure and inequality, education, disposable income and government policy—not merely population density. Moreover, in Haiti we've seen a significant decline in population growth rates since the 1980s (1.7% in 2007, down from 2.3% in 1984), hopefully indicating that the usual demographic transition is slowly underway.

My broader point, however, was that infant mortality rate (one of the best indicators of average living conditions, since it is affected by income, education, shelter, nutrition, access to safe water, etc.) has steadily declined even in Haiti, and much more rapidly in other places. Methodologically, an even better measure of the slow but significant improvement in Haitian living conditions in recent years is its Human Development Index score (an amalgam measure of quality-of-life indicators):



I'm not saying that reconstruction and development in Haiti will be easy. It won't--it will be enormously difficult, challenging, and prone to setbacks. We might even fail.

I am suggesting, however, that it is not impossible.

[Tom Kratman]

Deforestation tends to also be an issue of poor access to alternative energy supplies (including sparse rural electrification), land tenure and inequality, education, disposable income and government policy—not merely population density. Moreover, in Haiti we've seen a significant decline in population growth rates since the 1980s (1.7% in 2007, down from 2.3% in 1984), hopefully indicating that the usual demographic transition is slowly underway.

My broader point, however, was that infant mortality rate (one of the best indicators of average living conditions, since it is affected by income, education, shelter, nutrition, access to safe water, etc.) has steadily declined even in Haiti, and much more rapidly in other places. Methodologically, an even better measure of the slow but significant improvement in Haitian living conditions in recent years is its Human Development Index score (an amalgam measure of quality-of-life indicators):



I'm not saying that reconstruction and development in Haiti will be easy. It won't--it will be enormously difficult, challenging, and prone to setbacks. We might even fail.

I am suggesting, however, that it is not impossible.

"Not impossible," in this case, might as well be code for, "oh, me, oh, my; if only we care enough, and are sensitive enough, and toss enough money into the bottomless pit, we can rescue poor Haiti from itself."

I think it is impossible, because the core problem is not material, nor educational, nor health related, nor anything we can do anything about. The core problem is that the place has been such a disaster for so long - arguably, given its history as a slave colony, since inception - that it is engrained in them, or at least most of them, that nothing can work because nothing ever has, and that the only way to rise above the muck, even a little, is to look out for number one and number one's blood relations (and even the latter is somewhat atrophied by local reproductive mores). The problem is, therefore, moral and memetic and is not helped in the slightest by our on again-off again, feel-good-while-undermining-what-little-self-confidence-they-might-have attempts at western guilt reduction. Nor, for that matter, would a more sustained effort help for the reasons I gave above and because it is simply tangential to the core problem.

Frankly, I'm of the James Shikwati school of foreign aid, which is to say, "Don't."

[marct]

Hi Rex,

It is really easy to be cynical about the prospects for development in the so-called "third world"--especially if you ignore the actual data on third world development over the last thirty years or so.

I'll admit, I'm enough of a particularist to dislike generalist terms like the "third world". I've actually looked at a fair bit of the development work, although mainly in Africa, but I do have some problems with the indicators.

In most places, we've seen striking reductions in mortality, and improvements in nutrition, education, and real disposable income--largely due to local efforts, but in some cases (notably the reductions in infant and child mortality as a consequence of vaccination and education) due to critical contributions from the international community.

Which is all well and good. we saw exactly the same type of drop in child mortality 100 years ago in Nigeria, but what is not generally talked about is two things. First, is the drop brought about by permanent changes in the environment (e.g. swamp draining, massive but long last infrastructure, etc.) or is it brought about by external applications (e.g. vaccines)? The source of the change is crucial since external changes cannot be assumed to be lasting, while local changes, especially environmental, can be.

The second key point is that there is a culture lag relating to perceptions of how many children are "acceptable" and "necessary", and this is where the time element in the changes leading to drops in infant mortality becomes critical. It usually takes about 60 years for cultural perceptions of the required number of children per family to change to meet the "new" environment (BTW, as a point of clarification, I'm talking about population-level here).

Once you start to get these culture level changes going, usually 30-40 years and solidified by 60-70, you have a related problem which is controlling the birth rate via non-environmental factors (e.g. birth control). That's another culture lag problem, so you end up with a fairly big population bulge.

You mentioned changes in nutrition, education and real disposable income, so let me take up some of these. Nutrition is especially important, especially in early childhood, but it requires a number of different factors in your food production / distribution cycles - i.e. a fair diversity of foods being widely available and affordable. Education may or may not be useful as an indicator, it depends on education for what and the quality of the education, and Tom's point about setting up a diasporic brain drain is well taken (consider the Canada - US relationship on this one, and when it flips).

Let's talk about real disposable income, then. What resource potentials does it actually indicate and what will it be spent on? This is critical, especially if it is combined with a culture that tends towards kinetic "answers" to political problems. Consider, by way of example, the Muslim Brotherhood - well educated, fairly decent disposable income and a tendency to use it in kinetic terms, at least for the first 40-50 years of the operation. Nutrition, education and income do not automatically equate to a peaceful nation state .

Tom touched on the slave country problem, and it really is at the root of a lot of the cultural problems Haiti is facing. I'm not (quite) as pessimistic as Tom about there being a solution, but it isn't going to be easy at all, and would require some pretty massive socio-cultural engineering. Let's just take the familiarism that Tom raises which, BTW, is the only same response in that type of situation. How do you expand people's moral "inner curcle" to include people who are in the country, but not of your or an allied bloodline?

Historically, this has only been done via some form of cross-cutting (across bloodlines) allegiance system. Examples include secret societies, religions, "class consciousness" (although that tends to degenerate into alliance groups of bloodlines), fictive kinship systems and external enemies ("we either hang together or hang separately).

The latter, an external enemy, won't work in Haiti because it is what actually established a large part of the current culture in the first place (fear of invasion and re-enslavement, extensive militarization early on, invasion of the DR, etc.). Secret societies and fictive kinship systems are already a part of Haitian society and have a rather checkered past (tonton macoute anyone?); at any rate, they have tended to be too localized to effectively cross bloodlines unlike the lodge systems in west Africa, the north-west coast of BC or the Masons et alii.

This leaves us with religions (iffy) and class consciousness (quite fragmented and highly diverse). And, as a note, the type of class consciousness that operated to stabilize many of the western European countries was a fairly broad one with significant size in the population (look at the development of the middle class figures for western Europe in the 17th - 19th centuries), and most of them were formed around a pseudo-feudalist model which would have problems in Haiti.

One system that might work is some form of a cantonment system (think Switzerland in the mid-16th to mid-17th century with shades relating to France in the late 19th century) with cross-cuts for certain industries, religious groups and ideological groups. That, however, would require that the "national government", and pardon me while I laugh my guts out, agree to decentralize a large amount of its power and shift its electoral system. It would also require that development work be conducted at the canton level which for some groups would be fine, while others wouldn't get the necessary ROI to support their "deserving", lavish life style .

As I said, I can see some potential, but not much.

Cheers,

Marc

[Rex Brynen]

Which is all well and good. we saw exactly the same type of drop in child mortality 100 years ago in Nigeria, but what is not generally talked about is two things.

Rather less than a hundred years ago--by most measures, Nigeria's infant mortality rate is higher than Haiti's.

In any case, unless we're going to take a morally unsustainable Malthusian position that we'll let children die off en masse, we don't have much choice in the matter, do we?

First, is the drop brought about by permanent changes in the environment (e.g. swamp draining, massive but long last infrastructure, etc.) or is it brought about by external applications (e.g. vaccines)? The source of the change is crucial since external changes cannot be assumed to be lasting, while local changes, especially environmental, can be.

The evidence is. that vaccination, better access to primary health care, and education (especially female education) play key roles. However, these are both external (in that UNICEF, WHO, and others often play a key role in initial vaccination campaigns) and internal (in that these are almost always sustained over time by local governments).

The second key point is that there is a culture lag relating to perceptions of how many children are "acceptable" and "necessary", and this is where the time element in the changes leading to drops in infant mortality becomes critical.

Exactly the demographic transition I referred to earlier. In Haiti the fertility rate is high, but far from the highest in the developing world. There is some evidence that a slow demographic transition is underway, and as we know from other cases this is something that can be aided through support for family planning and especially female education and labour force participation.

Education may or may not be useful as an indicator, it depends on education for what and the quality of the education, and Tom's point about setting up a diasporic brain drain is well taken (consider the Canada - US relationship on this one, and when it flips).

I'm not sure of any country where increased primary/secondary school attendance and improved basic literacy rates can be considered a developmental negative. Yes, brain-drains are a problem--but less of a problem than an uneducated population. (I also wouldn't underestimate the very positive impact that diaspora remittances can have over multiple generations--Jordan, one of the proportionately highest exporters of semiskilled and skilled labour in the world--being a case in point.)

Consider, by way of example, the Muslim Brotherhood - well educated, fairly decent disposable income and a tendency to use it in kinetic terms, at least for the first 40-50 years of the operation. Nutrition, education and income do not automatically equate to a peaceful nation state .

Again, I'm not sure of the argument--that populations should be kept poor so that they won't do bad things with increased resources? (I would quibble in your characterization of the MB too--in general the movement has been quite peaceful, except where faced with massive state repression or foreign occupation.)

Tom touched on the slave country problem, and it really is at the root of a lot of the cultural problems Haiti is facing.

We don't do governance reform and rule-of-law well--its partly a cultural problem, but much more so a problem of entrenched interests and massive disparities of wealth and power, coupled with often inappropriate external models. Indeed, it is that context of years of exploitation, poverty, and inequality that help to shape Haitian political culture. There was, however, a broad consensus that (very gradual) progress was being made, pre-earthquake.

Again, I'm certainly not painting a rosy picture--I think the odds of disappointing results are quite high. However, so have the odds of a great many human endeavors!

[Tom Kratman]

Hi Rex,



I'll admit, I'm enough of a particularist to dislike generalist terms like the "third world". I've actually looked at a fair bit of the development work, although mainly in Africa, but I do have some problems with the indicators.



Which is all well and good. we saw exactly the same type of drop in child mortality 100 years ago in Nigeria, but what is not generally talked about is two things. First, is the drop brought about by permanent changes in the environment (e.g. swamp draining, massive but long last infrastructure, etc.) or is it brought about by external applications (e.g. vaccines)? The source of the change is crucial since external changes cannot be assumed to be lasting, while local changes, especially environmental, can be.

The second key point is that there is a culture lag relating to perceptions of how many children are "acceptable" and "necessary", and this is where the time element in the changes leading to drops in infant mortality becomes critical. It usually takes about 60 years for cultural perceptions of the required number of children per family to change to meet the "new" environment (BTW, as a point of clarification, I'm talking about population-level here).

Once you start to get these culture level changes going, usually 30-40 years and solidified by 60-70, you have a related problem which is controlling the birth rate via non-environmental factors (e.g. birth control). That's another culture lag problem, so you end up with a fairly big population bulge.

You mentioned changes in nutrition, education and real disposable income, so let me take up some of these. Nutrition is especially important, especially in early childhood, but it requires a number of different factors in your food production / distribution cycles - i.e. a fair diversity of foods being widely available and affordable. Education may or may not be useful as an indicator, it depends on education for what and the quality of the education, and Tom's point about setting up a diasporic brain drain is well taken (consider the Canada - US relationship on this one, and when it flips).

Let's talk about real disposable income, then. What resource potentials does it actually indicate and what will it be spent on? This is critical, especially if it is combined with a culture that tends towards kinetic "answers" to political problems. Consider, by way of example, the Muslim Brotherhood - well educated, fairly decent disposable income and a tendency to use it in kinetic terms, at least for the first 40-50 years of the operation. Nutrition, education and income do not automatically equate to a peaceful nation state .

Tom touched on the slave country problem, and it really is at the root of a lot of the cultural problems Haiti is facing. I'm not (quite) as pessimistic as Tom about there being a solution, but it isn't going to be easy at all, and would require some pretty massive socio-cultural engineering. Let's just take the familiarism that Tom raises which, BTW, is the only same response in that type of situation. How do you expand people's moral "inner curcle" to include people who are in the country, but not of your or an allied bloodline?

Historically, this has only been done via some form of cross-cutting (across bloodlines) allegiance system. Examples include secret societies, religions, "class consciousness" (although that tends to degenerate into alliance groups of bloodlines), fictive kinship systems and external enemies ("we either hang together or hang separately).

The latter, an external enemy, won't work in Haiti because it is what actually established a large part of the current culture in the first place (fear of invasion and re-enslavement, extensive militarization early on, invasion of the DR, etc.). Secret societies and fictive kinship systems are already a part of Haitian society and have a rather checkered past (tonton macoute anyone?); at any rate, they have tended to be too localized to effectively cross bloodlines unlike the lodge systems in west Africa, the north-west coast of BC or the Masons et alii.

This leaves us with religions (iffy) and class consciousness (quite fragmented and highly diverse). And, as a note, the type of class consciousness that operated to stabilize many of the western European countries was a fairly broad one with significant size in the population (look at the development of the middle class figures for western Europe in the 17th - 19th centuries), and most of them were formed around a pseudo-feudalist model which would have problems in Haiti.

One system that might work is some form of a cantonment system (think Switzerland in the mid-16th to mid-17th century with shades relating to France in the late 19th century) with cross-cuts for certain industries, religious groups and ideological groups. That, however, would require that the "national government", and pardon me while I laugh my guts out, agree to decentralize a large amount of its power and shift its electoral system. It would also require that development work be conducted at the canton level which for some groups would be fine, while others wouldn't get the necessary ROI to support their "deserving", lavish life style .

As I said, I can see some potential, but not much.

Cheers,

Marc

Interestingly enough, in 1980 I went to the Infantry Officer Basic Course (IOBC; it has a different name now) with two Haitians, one of them from TonTon Macout.

Yes, I found that rather odd, too.

[Tom Kratman]

Again, I'm certainly not painting a rosy picture--I think the odds of disappointing results are quite high. However, so have the odds of a great many human endeavors!

Let's try this; give us a plan. What has to be done? What force must we apply? What ROE? Who do we need to kill or terrorize, at least in general? Where is the consensus for applying that society-changing force? (Note: We appear to lack the fortitude even to shoot looters.) Who shall exercise sovereignty over the place and why will that work better? How will we keep the brain drain from occurring if we try to educate them? What will they do for money? Why, in this case, can we expect that most or nearly all aid will not simply be stolen or embezzled? (I am often quite amazed at the degree to which the people who object to trickle-down economics tacitly accept trickle-down aid.) How do we keep farmers employed farming when they cannot compete with free food? What is the reason to believe that, this time, the west will have the sticktoitiveness to keep any such effort going? And if none, or none that are credible, why bother?

[Rex Brynen]

Let's try this; give us a plan. What has to be done? What force must we apply? What ROE? Who do we need to kill or terrorize, at least in general?

Sheesh, Tom--we're talking about an aid-to-civil-powers, post-disaster reconstruction and development effort here. As a general rule, killing and terrorizing large groups of folks isn't what we're trying to do.

[Tom Kratman]

Sheesh, Tom--we're talking about an aid-to-civil-powers, post-disaster reconstruction and development effort here. As a general rule, killing and terrorizing large groups of folks isn't what we're trying to do.

No, it isn't what we're trying to do. Why not, though? We've tried all the soft, senstive, caring, hand-wringing, etc., etc., ad nauseam approaches and they _never_ work. Oh, sure, sometimes they'll give the appearance of working, for a while, and usually only a short while.

I, generally speaking, don't like pimping my books. On the other hand, I hate redoing things that don't need to be redone. The following is from D Minus X, forthcoming:

“Oh, God,” moaned Adam, seated between Abdi and Gheddi, “what is this?” The boy covered his mouth and nose with his hands and began to cough and sneeze from the thick dust that swirled around the bus. His kidneys were in agony from the pounding they’d taken from the combination of bad shocks and worse road.
“I believe this is called ‘foreign aid,’” Labaan answered.
The captive looked confused, and from more than the aftereffects of the drugs he’d been given.
“Foreign aid,” Labaan repeated, with a sneer. “You know: When guilty feeling Euros and Americans shell out money, ostensibly to help the people, but the money all ends up in the hands of sundry corrupt rulers and their relatives?”
“I don’t…”
“Understand?” Labaan stood up and, using the bus seats to hold himself erect against the bouncing, walked to the rear where Adam sat. Abdi moved over to open a space for Labaan to sit.
“We are travelling on what is supposed to be an all-weather, asphalt highway. Money was budgeted for it, no doubt by a consortium of Europeans and Americans, governmental and nongovernmental, both. No doubt, too, a generous provision for utterly necessary bribes was built in to every bid…well, except maybe for the Americans. For that matter, probably no American concerns bid on the project, since their government is death on paying bribes if they catch someone at it. Such an unrealistic people.”
If ever someone wore a smile that was three fourth’s sadness, that someone was Labaan. “Now let me tell you what happened with all the money that was supposed to go for the road. First, some very high ranking people in this country took the twenty or so percent that was factored into the bids for bribery. Then someone important’s first cousin showed up, waved some official looking papers, sprouted something in the local language that the contractor couldn’t understand. Then, in really excellent French, that cousin explained all manner of dire probabilities and suggested he could help. That cousin was then hired as a consultant. He was never seen again, except on payday.
“An uncle then showed up, in company with four hundred and thirty seven more or less distant family members, every one of which was hired and perhaps a third of which showed up for work on any given day, except for payday.”
The bus’ right front tire went into a remarkably deep and sharp pothole, causing the metal of the frame to strike asphalt and Labaan to wince with both the nerve-destroying sound and the blow, transmitted from hole to tire to almost shockless suspension to frame to barely padded and falling apart seat to him.
“A guerilla chieftain,” he continued, once the pain had passed, “perhaps of no particular relationship to the ruling family, then arrived, offering to provide security with his band of armed men. He was, at first, turned down. And then several pieces of heavy construction equipment burned one night. The guerillas were quickly hired. They never showed up either, except for their leader, at payday, but no more equipment was burned.
“Then came the tranzis, the Transnational Progressives, average age perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two, and knowing absolutely nothing about road construction. Indeed, most of them wouldn’t have even known what it meant to work. Rich boys and girls, trust fund babies, out to feel good about themselves by saving the world. They filled up every hotel room and hired the few competent, and critical, local engineers to do important things like act as chauffeurs and translators.”
The bus had now arrived at a washboard section of the road. Labaan kept speaking, but the steady thumpkareechsprong of the road and bus made his words warble almost as much as a helicopter pilot’s over a radio.
“More cousins came, and they, of course, had to be hired as consultants, as well.
“At about this time, the accountant for the project arrived and explained that it could no longer be done to the standard contracted for. The substrate began to suffer and the thickness of the road to be reduced. The demands for money, for the hiring of spurious workers and spurious services, never ended. With each mile of road, that substrate became less to standard and that surface became thinner.”
Labaan shook his head. “And then came the first rain…”
At that moment, both front tires went into a large, more or less linear hole, adding the screech of metal as the fender twisted to all the more usual sounds.
“As I said: ‘Foreign Aid.’ And it doesn’t matter a whit whether it come from NGOs, quangos, governments, or rock stars; it never does a bit of good. Never. Fifty-seven billion United States dollars come to Black Africa every year in aid, official and unofficial, Adam. Fifty billion is deposited to foreign accounts by our rulers.”

******

That's a fairly accurate description. Can you offer a better solution to that than sustained firepower, ruthlessly applied? Well...okay...maybe ropes and trees.

Addendum: It occurs to me that there aren't enough trees in Haiti to hang everyone we'd need to hang, so shooting to death by musketry will have to do.

[jmm99]

from TK
That's a fairly accurate description. Can you offer a better solution to that than sustained firepower, ruthlessly applied? Well...okay...maybe ropes and trees.

Addendum: It occurs to me that there aren't enough trees in Haiti to hang everyone we'd need to hang, so shooting to death by musketry will have to do.

will rise or fall on its own merits without need for me to say anything.

[Rex Brynen]

That's a fairly accurate description. Can you offer a better solution to that than sustained firepower, ruthlessly applied? Well...okay...maybe ropes and trees.

Addendum: It occurs to me that there aren't enough trees in Haiti to hang everyone we'd need to hang, so shooting to death by musketry will have to do.

As jmm99 so eloquently put it--no comment necessary. Perhaps a mod might want to close the thread before someone gets the impression that the Small Wars Journal has become the Mass Lynching Journal?

[davidbfpo]

Added by a Moderator

Rex,

Asked:

Perhaps a mod might want to close the thread before someone gets the impression that the Small Wars Journal has become the Mass Lynching Journal?

I have my doubts about where this thread is going, so in due course I will remove some of the recent posts to another, new thread and keep this thread on Haiti & Canada. The new thread is called 'Harsh in Haiti: a light discussion': http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=9562

Rightly Rex observes the harshness of some posts may affect SWJ's standing, so future threads will be closely watched for their moderation.

[davidbfpo]

Moderators Note

Created to house some recent postings on another thread, which discussed the Haiti-Canada linkage: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=9534

This thread was created as some have suggested that a solution to the problems of Haiti is to be harsh.

Posts here will be moderated if their tone verges on what can be perceived inside and outside SWC as advocating lynching (taken from Rex).

[Rex Brynen]

I will remove some of the recent posts to another, new thread and keep this thread on Haiti & Canada.

...and with that sensible suggestion, back to the original topic:

Canada prepares to host Haiti recovery meeting
By KATHLEEN HARRIS, PARLIAMENTARY BUREAU, QMI AGENCY
Toronto Star
Last Updated: 24th January 2010, 12:41pm

OTTAWA — Canada is preparing to welcome foreign ministers from around the globe Monday who will plot a path forward for earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said the gathering of nations will not be a "pledging conference" but an initial, critical step forward on the long road to Haiti's recovery.

"Together with the government of Haiti, we need to roll up our sleeves and begin to lay the groundwork for the enormous task ahead," Cannon said during a briefing with reporters Sunday. "My objectives for this meeting are simple but necessary: We need to arrive at a common understanding and commitment on certain basic principles of responsibility, accountability and long-term engagement."

Fourteen countries, including the U.S., France, Japan and Mexico, will participate in the conference along with international financial institutions and non-government organizations such as the Red Cross, Oxfam and Care Canada. Cannon hopes participants will define a "road map" for long-term tasks that lie ahead.

Cannon said the focus of the government is also on repatriating the remains of Canadian victims of the earthquake since the Government of Haiti declared the search and rescue phase over Saturday. He said the government is working through a number of "complex logistical issues" related to identification and proper documentation of individuals.

To date, 19 Canadians are confirmed dead and 216 are still missing after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

...

[Tom Kratman]

By the way, no, I don't mean lynching. Trials are indicated. There are, however, valid reasons why certain crimes, in emergency circumstances, are traditionally capital and why the fleeing felon rule is often rightly applied. What is it but murder, after all, when someone steals life-saving aid in an emergency?

[jmm99]

we now can exclude mass lynching.

So, what should the rules of engagement be (not "are" - I know those), from your moral and ethical standpoint, with respect to the felons about which you are concerned ?

Drilling down to your bus vignette in post #19 - a Narrative which Cabral would probably recite (if still alive), or one that I would recite if in Labaan's sandals (if he could afford them) - what are your solutions to the various problems recited ?

Hopefully now a better level of discourse.

Mike

[John T. Fishel]

I am somewhat perplexed by the Haitian response to the earthquake flip flopping between slightly more optimistic and slightly more pessimistic. Haitian culture has been characterized by folks who make it a point to study Haiti and who have spent a lot more time there than I have as "predatory." Following Operation Uphold Democracy I wrote predicting that we (the international community) would have to return to Haiti in a decade or so. A decade it was. Tom makes the point here that the "international community" has always lacked the will to do what is required to help Haiti overcome its predatory culture. That, indeed, has been the case although sometimes it has been that we don't know what to do. Hence frustration. Rex comments that there was a general consensus pre-earthquake that Haiti was beginning to get its act together - something I referred to in my earlier post. But, Rex, was it a really well-founded consensus or simply wishful thinking?

Cheers

JohnT

[Rex Brynen]

Tom makes the point here that the "international community" has always lacked the will to do what is required to help Haiti overcome its predatory culture. That, indeed, has been the case although sometimes it has been that we don't know what to do. Hence frustration. Rex comments that there was a general consensus pre-earthquake that Haiti was beginning to get its act together - something I referred to in my earlier post. But, Rex, was it a really well-founded consensus or simply wishful thinking?

I think it was more than wishful thinking (as the HDI indicators suggest), but at the same time very, very modest and very fragile progress.

Part of the problem has always been, frankly, national leadership—something over which the international community has no real influence. Preval has the advantage that he has been somewhat less willing to use some of the dysfunctional methods of his predecessors, and has greater appreciation for the technical complexities of many of the challenges at hand. On the other hand, he's hardly a charismatic leader of the sort that one would hope for in any effort to rally the population for the long, difficult (and yes, frustrating task) of national reconstruction.

[John T. Fishel]

However, the human talent IN Haiti has been and remains pretty poor. Talented Haitians go to the US and Canada where they join the diaspora and contribute money but, generally, do not return to Haiti to lend their talents on a permanent basis. In the UNMIH era I recall one who attempted to do so, served as Prime Minister for a while, and was forced out by Pres Aristide. We need to recall that Pres Preval was Aristide's successor as President and, after having been a strong supporter, was totally undercut by Aristide ...

So, how much hope can one have that Haiti will rise to the challenge? How much hope can we have that the international community led by Brazil, Canada, Chile, and the US will retain its interest and will to nudge, cajole, support, train, fund, and threaten (if necessary) Haiti's leaders to themselves do the right thing?

On that cheery note

JohnT

[Tom Kratman]

we now can exclude mass lynching.

So, what should the rules of engagement be (not "are" - I know those), from your moral and ethical standpoint, with respect to the felons about which you are concerned ?

Drilling down to your bus vignette in post #19 - a Narrative which Cabral would probably recite (if still alive), or one that I would recite if in Labaan's sandals (if he could afford them) - what are your solutions to the various problems recited ?

Hopefully now a better level of discourse.

Mike

If you mean a way to make aid go to those around the world who really need and could make good use of it _without_ at the same time demoralizing and corrupting the societies it is going to, sadly, except for things that are merely tactical, I don't _have_ any. I wish I did. I worked at this sort of thing for quite a while, tactically, commanding a CA team, also a bit on the money-raising side, and strategically/doctrinally, as de facto in house counsel (technically, Director, Rule of Law) for the PKSOI. The more I worked at it, the more hopeless I became that any real solutions were possible and practical. That said, there is something to be said for the United States, as a condition of aid, insisting on the at least partial surrender of sovereignty to the extent of allowing us to seize, try, and punish those in the recipient countries guilty of corruption that involves our money or goods or our citizens' money or goods.

I don't think we have the internal moral wherewithal for that so it strikes me as useless to contemplate doing it, by the way.

And, ere we get too very upturned-nosey at the corruption in the Third World, our NGOs and charities are all too often guilty of equal corruption, coupled with no small amount of outright fraud.

As for ROE for use of deadly force in emergency situations, we've given the order, "shoot to kill or maim looters and arsonists," within the United States within the last 42 years and, I think, more recently than that. Though I would be inclined to add to it the still lawful (generally and technically, but don't hang your hat on it) fleeing felon rule. It is critical to establish order quickly and thoroughly in circumstances where wolves (the two legged kind) are at large and people's lives depend on the aid the wolves will steal, given the chance.

The fleeing felon rule, by the way, is not a rule of summary execution. It authorizes deadly force, yes, to prevent escape, but felons (common law felons, rather) who surrender are to be arrested and taken for trial. The purpose of the rule is to keep them from escaping to commit yet more crimes. Accepting that mistakes will be made, I think it is overall a good rule, generally, and certainly in a place that was hit as Haiti was. Oddly enough, the fleeing felon rule is pretty much dead for police officers here, but still valid for civilians.

(Is there ever a place for summary execution? The UCMJ says "yes." It is very narrow, however. Look up mutiny.)

At the time of writing, I didn't realize you were a lawyer and likely know all of this. Others, however, will not.

[jmm99]

Since the bus vignette and its Narrative seemed realistic to me, I thought Labaan might have some suggestions. He sounds like an interesting character.

As to shooting looters, that was part of the Detroit Riot - discussed as part of the COIN comes home thread. Ken White's unit did not find it necessary to shoot anyone, Went there, did that. "Shoot all the looters" is a good soundbite; so also "Shoot all irregular combatants".

As to the "fleeing felon" rule, some materials re: Tennessee v Garner are linked here, Tennessee v. Garner (part of the Astan ROE Change thread).

As to mutiny, I couldn't find any summary execution provisons in the Manual for Courts-Martial re: "mutiny" (searched all returns on the word). Obviously, during the active mutiny, we have a combat situation where "armed, hostile, shoot" would be a valid rule. Once the mutineers have surrendered, another story - see, Summary Execution.

True that Tony Waller was acquitted at his 1902 CM (for reasons that mostly avoided the merits); but in that case, there was more relative filth to cast at the flag grades (see J. Franklin Bell and Jacob H. Smith) than with the field and company grades who had to carry out the orders (dirty or not).

Within my own personal package of morals and ethics (and a vivid imagination), I could think of scenarios where my morals and ethics would allow summary actions (including executions) in sitations where "exigent circumstances" or "absolute necessity" exist. Others' morals and ethics would collide with mine. In general, discussing the extremes leads to extremes in discourse. In any event, "exigent circumstances" and "absolute necessity" are "jury nullification" arguments, which are thin reeds indeed. In Waller's case, they worked, but he never got to command the Corps.

Regards

Mike