The Emperor Has No Clothes

Latin America’s major nations have balked at an American plan to establish under the aegis of the Organization of American States a permanent committee to oversee the exercise of democracy in the hemisphere.

At first blush, one might infer from the reluctant countries’ reaction that they are less enthusiastic about the notion of democracy than the United States. These countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and Uruguay, have good reason to believe , however, that the truth of the matter can be located quite the opposite way around.

What they know (and most of us do not) is that the Bush Administration bore major responsibility in 2004 for the overthrow of democracy in Haiti, an OAS member state.

Jean Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s lawful president, had been democratically elected twice, and by indisputably wide margins. With the encouragement of Washington, an emboldened band of anti-democratic thugs, bearing American arms and equipment, began in early 2004 making their way across the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, moving toward Port-au-Prince, the capital, burning, razing, killing as they went, town by petrified town.