POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
"No mercy for a tyrant who showed none"
Oh, I see, you mean Baby Doc.
My mind had leapt, on first reading that, to visions of war criminals like George Bush and Tony Blair.
Had the writer of these extremely sanctimonious and almost darkly comical words even considered for one moment how Baby Doc and his father, Papa Doc, managed to run a reign of terror for so very long (from 1957 to 1986)?
The United States was always in quiet compliance with these men, especially the father.
It could have ended the terror in very short order, had it chosen to do so, but it did not chose to do so for a very good reason: they both served American interests. One suspects they were both on the CIA's secret payroll too, a common enough situation for many of the world’s less pleasant villains, always providing they support American aims.
And has it occurred to the chest-beating silly person who wrote this editorial how Baby Doc even returned for this organized stage play?
He had no valid Haitian passport. These days especially you cannot just get on a plane and fly to another place without good documents.
The U.S. had to be party to his return, but why? It certainly was not out of any sense of righteousness. After all, the U.S. tolerated a long series of bloodthirsty tyrants from Pinochet, who killed at least 15,000 people, to the various military juntas who used to make people “disappear” by the thousands – all known to U.S. authorities but quietly supported in everything from training in the American Army’s infamous (now renamed) School of the Americas to providing military equipment and quiet payments from the CIA.
I don’t know what the U.S. intention here is, but it has absolutely nothing with the editorial writer’s chest-beating silliness.
