Clinton on what we must do for Haiti

The good news: he doesn’t say that we must bring the Haitians here. (After all, he was the President who sent the Marines to change the Haitian government in order to stop the Haitian boat people from coming here.)

The bad news is in the bolded text:

First we must care for the injured, take care of the dead, and sustain those who are homeless, jobless and hungry. As we clear the rubble, we will create better tomorrows by building Haiti back better: with stronger buildings, better schools and health care; with more manufacturing and less deforestation; with more sustainable agriculture and clean energy.

Establishing this foundation for a better Haitian future will require assistance from governments, businesses and private citizens. The people of Haiti deserve our support. Those eager to help can donate through the U.N. effort, my own foundation or by text message (text “HAITI” to 20222 to donate $10 to U.N. relief efforts).

This goes well beyond Haiti’s immediate health, shelter, water, food, and rebuilding needs following this horrible catastrophe. He’s saying that we must create better schools (i.e., better education) for Haiti, that we must provide the Haitians with better health care, that we must create Haitian manufacturing, that we must redesign their methods of agriculture.

It’s absurd, it’s … gnostic. One nation cannot turn another, dysfunctional nation into a functional nation. It cannot create that nation’s basic institutions and make them work. It cannot create and maintain that nation’s educational system and health care system. Either that nation does these things for itself, or they’re not going to be done.

The U.S. has intermittantly occupied and governed Haiti over much of the last hundred years. If Haiti is unable to govern and maintain itself at a level that the conscience of mankind can accept, which may especially be the case after this calamity in which so much of its structure and infrastructure has been destroyed, then it may simply be necessary for outside forces to govern the country. As I said, one nation cannot build another nation. But one nation can take over and govern another nation, and, in that position of actual power and leadership, build up its infrastructure, its education, its health care, its agriculture and manufactuing and so on. How about the French? They haven’t done anything helpful and positive in the world in, oh, a couple of centuries at least. They’ve got that “mission to civilize,” haven’t they? Well, here’s their chance—and also perhaps a historical chance for them to make right whatever went wrong the first time they colonized Haiti. At the least it will give them a useful job to do, instead of their usual activities of conspiring with the enemies of Israel and facilitating the Islamization of Europe.

I know the idea sounds ludicrous, since the first French colony ended with the Haitians massacring the French colonists. But that’s a long time ago, and, frankly, I’m anxious to find a way to save America from having to be the occupying power in post earthquake Haiti.

N. writes:

Bill Clinton is just doing what he does best when it comes to Haiti: saying stuff that sounds good. It doesn’t mean a thing. Like many other liberals, he confuses words with action; so long as he says the right things, why, it’s as if he actually did something. Consider Jesse Jackson: how many times has he blathered on some TV show about “babies makin” babies,” in a reference to underaged unmarried pregnant girls? I’m sure hundreds, if not thousands of times. Now, how many times has Jackson actually proposed any sort of concrete solution to the problem? I believe the number is less than zero, if you count his bastard child(ren).

So I do not put much weight upon the empty words of Clinton. If he was serious about his words, he’d take some of the millions the Saudi government has given to him and actually put his words into action. Think that’s going to happen?

Yeah, I don’t think so either.

An Indian living in the West writes:

What about the French? They haven’t done anything helpful and positive in the world in, oh, a couple of centuries at least.

Way worse than that. The French Revolution was an unmitigated disaster and was a precursor to the horrors of the 20th century.

I know that this sounds cruel and inhuman but beyond providing emergency aid, Haiti should be left alone. The experience of the last half a century or more proves that Western leftists make a bad situation far far worse. Africa is replete with such examples. The Haitians should be left alone. Turning Haiti into Connecticut is nobody’s business.

Nik S. writes:

It comes down to this: Haiti, and Haitians, would be much better off if France had never left.

Einton writes:

Karl D. wrote on your site: “I am just waiting for the ideological gymnastics that will come in the ensuing days as to why Haiti is a perpetually failed state.”

Well, they’ve already started rolling in! See NYT article “Haiti and the Politics of Disaster” by Tobin Harshaw.

Four great quotes from clueless lefties.

1) “Columbia University’s Steven Cohen, writing at Huffington Post, sees Haiti’s tragedy as a chance for America to expunge the sins of George W. Bush.”

So it was Bush’s fault.

2) “Jill Tubman and Jack and Jill politics also place blame farther back—upon those who feared the very idea of a Black Republic: ‘Their poverty historically was arranged by those who did not, could not let the nation succeed despite its wealth of natural resources..’”

I see. So it was the white man’s fault. The white man “arranged,” whatever that means, for Haitians not to succeed. Ok …

So is it just a coincidence that Haiti is the most dirt-poor and crime-ridden country in the Western Hemisphere and just happens to be the only majority-black country in the Western Hemisphere (excluding small-population republics like Jamaica)?? Oops, I forgot we’re not supposed to make common sense comparisons like that.

3) “The earthquake in Haiti was not only a global tragedy, it was a wake-up call for all of us to do what we know we were supposed to be doing in the first place,” writes Dr. Boyce Watkins at the Grio, apparently hoping that Western guilt will engender Western action.

I thought we weren’t supposed to be doing anything in the first place? Just stay out of the way and let blacks run their own country, and they will make a success of it, like they have of majority-black countries in Africa. Oops. Not a good comparison. They’re all disasters too.

Let me analyze this a bit further. This condescending lefty is basically saying that blacks can’t take care of themselves, so whites should have been doing “something” for them all along. Like what? What could we possibly due to help them short of running the country for them?

4) “It seems that just as the country is poised to turn a corner, an act of God, like yesterday’s devastating earthquake, sends Haiti reeling back.” So says Mark Leon Goldberg of the Daily beast.

Ah of course—Haiti is a failure due to “acts of God.” Hmmm, sounds like a nice and tidy answer to explain the country’s failures, but the Japanese archipelago is plagued with even more earthquakes, and they’ve managed to build the second largest economy on the planet??

My lefty friends—wake up. Race matters.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 14, 2010 05:18 PM | Send