CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS - When it comes to totalitarian dictators, especially tin-pot ones, the highly respected American Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell, sure does mince words.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell participates in a session of the Organization of American States in Santiago, Chile (AFP/Phelipe Gonzalez)

"I am pleased to announce that the United States will provide an additional $1 million to the Organization of American States Special Mission to help improve the security climate for what we hope will be free and fair elections in Haiti," the western one-third - it is increasingly seen as a flaming match in a petrol-drenched neighborhood, and the author of this article has presented a solid case for extinguishing that flame - of the island of Hispañola and the Dominican Republic the remainder, Mr. Powell eloquently said on June 9th during his intervention at the Plenary of the General Assembly of the OAS, in Santiago, Chile.

"The United States," he added, "has increased our humanitarian assistance to $70 million in the current fiscal year for Haiti."

But if Mr. Powell's words at first were simply interpreted to be those of a Samaritan from the wealthy nation, the United States, of the north (GDP or purchasing power parity $10.082 trillion, 2001 est.), not bullets, as many often anticipate, however, the apparent ammunition damp on Haiti's vicious tyrant, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his murderous de facto regime, from a distance, as Mr. Powell's intervention progressed, rather, suggests, at least, that an ultimatum of sorts was given to the Caribbean dictator to soon conform his behavior, to soon turn Haiti, the poorest nation (GDP or purchasing power parity $12 billion, 2001 est.) in the Western Hemisphere, into a democratic state - convincingly, a highway to economic advancement - from a calamity.

"However, if by this September the government of Haiti has not created the climate of security to the formation of a credible, neutral and independent provisional electoral council, we should reevaluate the role of the OAS in Haiti," Mr. Powell said.

Caution: given a series of largely fraudulent elections held in 2000, which capitulated only members of Aristide's Lavalas (literally, flood) party into public offices, add the sophisticated system of repression built up over the past ten years or so, with the help of narco-dollars, it will be a mistake, and a big one, to assume that the tyrant and his brutal dictatorship (Aristide's dictatorship shares many features with those of Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro, and Josef Stalin), which comprehensively have long been under serious attack by democracy and human rights advocates, will be consigned to the archives of history in a record time of less than three months without using force on them, as the U.S. did to famously write the obituary of murderous Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Time is on the United States' side before it is obscured by subsequent crimes against humanity, which according to the International Criminal Tribunals (I.C.T.), are defined as: "murder, extermination, imprisonment, torture, rape, persecutions on political grounds, and other inhumane acts."

The perpetual or professional critics, mainly of the hard-left, against the use of military force by the United States have a duty to knowledge that something good has to happen in the "fake Republic" of Haiti, long commonly called Uncle Sam's backyard (refer to the Monroe's doctrine), and that this good has to be weighed in the scale against the odious crimes of monstrous Aristide (nepotism, corruption and dishonesty are incarnate in him) and his enormously illegitimate regime.

ABC News via The New York Times The pantheon of assassins - From left to right, Adolf Hitler, gone; Josef Stalin, history; Saddam Hussein, no more, but why the Talibans of America, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in dark suit, and Fidel Castro, left photo, which may be subject to copyright, are still permitted to practise atrocities?

Fine, they might argue against the use of military force, using the usual false, if not antiquated, pretense of nationalism - until recently, there was a growing scholarly consensus that nationalism was a distinctly modern phenomenon, a product of post-Enlightenment culture, wrote Alexander Stille in a New York Times May 31, 2003 article, in which the following words could also be read: public celebrations of the fatherland, the creation of national anthems and devotion to the flag all occurred in the wake of the French and American Revolutions - or, a sovereign nation should not interfere into the internal affairs of another one, but the odious crimes, which will most likely become more sophisticated with time, of Aristide and his bloodthirsty regime, if the latter two are not consigned to the archives of history, will understandably continue to be reminders to Haitians that any dream of democracy and economic prosperity will remain just that. 

To see how extremely murderous or cruel are Aristide and his de facto Lavalas regime (they, essentially, have imagined their own laws that if written and handed out to citizens as a little book would be reminiscent of Mao Zedong's red one), as was Hussein, start with a sampling of their most recent odious crimes. 

Some Haitians, though the number of victims is believed to surpass more than 1,000, have reported that after they are unjustly held Aristide's thugs often torture them for days, beating their feet, faces and buttocks, running electric shocks through their toes, tongues, pennies and vaginas at such a voltage that it sends them into convulsions. Their real crime? They are democracy and human rights advocates, they organize peaceful expressions of popular discontent.

Worse, there have been crimes involving brutal murders. The past three years or so well publicized political murders in the dirt-poor Caribbean nation of Haiti were those of Jean Léopold Dominique (a revered radio journalist and political commentator who years earlier had the temerity to question Aristide's vast fortune with a shake of the head, his perceived lack of probity in public life. Unsurprisingly, that rivaled many other journalists' inquiries about foreign aid money, $730.6 million, in 1995 alone, that had never been accounted for, as the vast majority of Haitians continued to languish in poverty), whom more than ten fatal shots were pumped into his small body, in the early morning of Apr. 3, 2000, in the capital city of Port-au-Prince.

Yet, Brignol Lindor, a young provincial radio journalist was hacked to death, on Dec. 3, 2001, in the l'Acul district, near the provincial city of Petit-Goâve, 30 miles west of of Port-au-Prince.

Two of vicious tyrant Jean-Bertrand Aristide' victims - A journalist shows a photograph of Brignol Lindor during a protest, which was severely repelled by Aristide's thugs, demanding justice for thousands of other innocent victims as well. An man (R) murdered by Aristide's thugs after offering an opinion about dehumanizing poverty and brutal dictatorship that continue to define the daily lives of Haitians. (AP Photos / Daniel Morel)

Horrific though these crimes were, and many others of the same nature and gravity, so far the murderers, including their intellectual authors, of Dominique and Lindor, have yet to be taken out of the circulation and charged with the crimes.

As the virtual impunity that the perpetrators - all, government paid thieves, drug dealers, rapists, and many more of the same nature - of the odious crimes continue to enjoy might suggest, at the time they were all and, still are they members of Lavalas, the political party - not quite its name suggests, the party of Satan - of Haiti's uncommonly vicious tyrant, Aristide.

Secure in the knowledge that since they were simply the hit-men for Haiti's madman and psychopath, Aristide, as his often erratic behavior suggests, and that they will never face the bar of justice for their crimes, recently were the same murderous criminals and newly hired ones, commonly known as Chimères (after the firebreathing monsters in Greek mythology), vowing to add another longtime and prominent Haitian radio journalist, Lillianne Pierre-Paul, to their long list of victims. 

The history behind the murderous bandits' recent death threats tells of a Ms. Pierre-Paul (her name spurs national widespread recognition), the owner of Haiti's Radio Kiskeya, who had vehemently refused to join bestial Aristide in his recently launched campaign (reparations?) to extort $21,685,135,571.48, the de facto government official risible figure - not counting interest and penalties - from France, "a rapacious, racist and criminal Western European nation," theatrically said the little man, "that must pay Haiti, one of its former colonies, for subjecting Haitians' forefathers to slavery, and for centuries so," in an April 7th speech, marking the 200th anniversary of Haiti's independence precursor, François Dominique Toussaint Louverture.

More importantly, "for forcing Haiti to pay an agreed 90 million gold Francs, long before its January 1, 1804 proclamation of independence was ultimately recognized, in 1838," dictator Aristide accentuated, punctuated by shoots of "France, you owe us, and pay right now," during the April 7th de facto government choreographed mass demonstration, giving many the impression that the former red priest of the shantytowns was, rather, putting on an almost imperial show of power, he had the military capability to attack France and ultimately force it to come to terms.

There were songs of protest, including an almost rendition of Haiti's proclamation of independence that promptly brought the de facto government window-dressing neo-revolutionaries and assassins to their feet with fists raised.  

To see how they (the bandits) meant business, that they were not simply playing with her mind, in the envelope containing the April 30th death threat letter, in Creole, Haiti's lingua franca, ordering Ms. Pierre-Paul to reverse course, no later than May 6th, they specified, also was a hunting riffle bullet.

By the contents of the bandits' death threat letter, they will, too, destroy, and ferociously so, the bodies of French citizens residing in Haiti - slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland, with a 2002 estimated population of 8.2 million - unless France writes a big check, and within days so.  

Like Saddam Hussein has been referred to as a murderous tyrant, because he killed an incalculable number of his fellow Iraqi citizens and others, is such a characterization applies to Aristide, who has burnt alive, defrauded and kidnapped thousands of his fellow Haitian compatriots.

Millions of other Haitians, mostly the vast majority of poor men and women, hell-sent dictator Aristide long claims to be the champion, though they have yet to meet a brutal end, but abject poverty (poverty fosters crimes, and crimes impoverished; impoverishment translates into near or simply zero purchasing power, alternately, malnutrition, which causes people to be more susceptible to diseases stemming from a weakened immune system), one of his legacies, continues to define their daily lives, as the plutocrat dictator, who ironically was born in a mud hut and family that was culturally Voodoo and practising, and his large number of partners in crime, continue to enrich themselves and lavish millions of narco-dollars on ostentatious displays of status - private helicopters, luxury homes and states.

Certainly, killing of say, Haitians (their country has, to put it mildly, a lot of other problems. Death rate, 14.88/1,000 population, 2002 est.; infant mortality rate, 93.35/1,000 live births, 2002 est. A much bigger problem, with the number of people, 5.17%/ 8.2 million population, living with HIV/AIDS, life expectancy at birth is 49.55, 2002 est, a slump from 54.45, 1999 est.) of all stripes, and brutally so, may soon not be the only province of Aristide - the personification of totalitarian dictatorship, mainly in the Caribbean. The best way to understand this as the ferocious dictator sinks into grandiose illusions, that he shares some personality features with Stalin, too, for example, he must do more than repeatedly throwing rhetorical hand grenades at the United States, especially President George W. Bush, whom he has repeatedly - a musical record goes bad, a refrain, as many have lately termed it - accused of blocking foreign aid money for Haiti, his cruel and sadistic behavior may also be expressed against American citizens residing in Haiti.

Let's remember further the history of Aristide. Arguably, he is a man who exploits Voodoo, just to hang onto illegitimate power, to deliver, unadroitly, small lies, big lies (Plato famously argued that "philosopher king sometimes has to be willing to tell "noble lies in order to keep the ignorant masses in line), as his April decree, conferring the rights to Haitian believers in the ancestral African religion to practice the latter suggests.

In 1991, Aristide prided himself in the philosophy of juche, or self-reliance. Ironically, today the man who seems unable to understand donors' fatigue with him and his corrupt de facto regime continues to be confident he will again milk the international community, which since his return to the office of the presidency, in 1994, after three years in exile, in Washington, D.C., the imperialist capital, as he used to call it, has, globally, lent more than U.S.$2 billion, including more than U.S.$200 million in French aid, mainly to his first and current governments, de facto though the latter may be. (He terrorized all other political parties into not filling in candidates for public offices.)

Yes, the epitaph of Saddam Hussein and his long reign of terror has been sung. But the trust of the world will further come to believe that the remaining dictators must begin to understand the need to commence conforming their behavior, that is playing by the international democratic rules, only after the United States clearly says as for Haiti words must now carry further. This means using force - regime change, the currency of the Bush's administration - on Aristide and his barbarous de facto regime, the cores of Haiti's imaginable problems, long known to be terrorist sympathizers and deeply trafficking in narcotics (according to U.S. government, 14 percent of  the drugs that enter America, as it is commonly called, transits via Haiti), with the U.S. as one of its major markets.

To further argue that force must be used on Caribbean Adolf Hitler's surrogate dictator, Aristide, including his fascist regime - their replacement, say, with a multi-party provisional national council of government to guarantee security and the holding of unimpeachable free and fair general elections, within two years - such a noble action will be the happy side-effect for United States' citizens and residents alike, add other nations' ones, who long have been led to believe their hard earned tax moneys have been used to aid the destitute Haitians, but sadly abetting murders - once again attested dictator Aristide in recent weeks, with the assassination or kidnapping of Haitians highly critical of his brutal rule.

To paraphrase Voltaire, whose writings epitomized the Age of Enlightenment, "indeed, radical leftist Aristide's history is, correctly, a tableau of crimes." This is one of his imaginable odious crimes this week, a novelty, because of the intended victim's prominence. It is not a Casa Nostra story, as the 1999 brutal murder - Stalinist-like inter-party fatal violence - of Jean Lamy, a prominent Lavalas party member and former Haitian army colonel, planned and carried out by rival members of the party of the same name, who wanted the top job for themselves, shortly after he was unofficially designated as the next Haitian National (H.N.P.) police chief suggests.

Also, an attempt to implicate the outgoing police chief, Robert Manuel, who had launched a serious investigation of deceitful and criminal Aristide and many of his associates, after he received words, with certitudes, all were deeply trafficking in narcotics and responsible for an incalculable number of murders. This one is essentially about an unwanted newly appointed Haitian national police chief, Jean-Robert Faveur, 37 - apparently democratic in character or, alternately, a wholly non-murderer. It is one of the everyday tragedies that will strike you most deeply, even if you do not reside in Haiti or, assumedly you primarily depend on the effective leadership of the police chief for your own personal security, the protection of your business venture, just in case you happen to be an entrepreneur, even an entrapreneur. 

What, you wonder, that made firebrand Aristide so vengeanceful as to attempt to brutally terminate the young life of Faveur, with the help of a duty-bound (murderous) commando, as it has been reported by eyewitnesses, despite he was apparently chosen by him - a painful scene reminiscent to Stalin's native of Belarus (a small former Soviet Union Republic) war minister who succeeded Leon Trotsky as such? The answer, to the question I paused above, what it is about? I don't have to struggle for words.

In recent weeks, the employment of Jean Nesly Lucien as Aristde's pet national police chief and former gardener, who had failed to meet even the rudimentary requirements for a secondary-school diploma, was terminated. In fact, it was long after he was suspected to have have been deeply trafficking in narcotics, mainly for the benefice of Aristide and predecessor René Préval (a rotation of plundering de facto governments), who often drinks vodka for breakfast, publicly attested Dany Touusaint, a notorious drug dealer and one of the prime suspects in the death of Dominique - the prominent radio journalist, just in case you apparently suffer from amnesia - turned-senator-of the Republic. Among his many other mortal sins, gross human rights violations, also prompted the international community, especially the United States, to exercise pressure on Aristide to dismiss him, along with calls of "we demand that the police force be professionalized."

Pointing out to the causes, resulting in Lucien's forced dismissal, and the ascendancy of Faveur shortly thereafter, a man the international community hoped would not only help reform the long discredited 4,000-member police force, but give it the autonomy needed to effectively function as a law-enforcement institution, not a quasi-gang, now, you can easily understand why Aristide does not want his dreams of murdering a lot more Haitians and generating millions more narco-dollars to remain just that. He has to physically eliminate Faveur. Is there any way out of this mess of criminal nature? Yes, it shows the understanding that there is an urgent need for the United States to help to or simply remove the chief bandit itself by force.             

Despair - Haitian boat people on a highway in Miami. In photo, R, a manifestation of despair and hope. Haitians imploring God. They believe in him so much, that he is the only one capable of putting an end to the multitude of problems - dehumanizing poverty, ferocious dictatorship, and many more of the same nature and gravity - that continue to define their daily lives. (AP /Photos)

What is more? By way of explanation, what exactly should be expected to occur, in the positive sense, once Haiti - if one thinks of Haiti's economy, a percentage of 85 in relation to the 3.6 million work force, 2002 est., is unemployed and underemployed - is no longer locked by Aristide and his too much a primitive regime? I doubtless find reasons not to be convinced that the vast majority of Haitians will commence to hope that they will soon have the ingredients - jobs, piped water, electricity, and many more of the same nature - of a minimum civilized material standard of living. (The meaning of life, according to economic theory, is maximized utility. Democracy and happiness, it appears, also have something to do with it.) This, to paraphrase Aristotle, will certainly help them explain the levels of happiness enjoyed. Overall, a grand celebration of the true meaning of life. 

If there is another conclusion that can be drawn from the removal of the deeply rooted and violent Aristide, to include his largely destructive regime, Haitians will be delivered from terror: government sponsored killings have stopped; murderous gangsters and terrorists, hiding under the cover of members of popular organizations, who, too, run their own, but paralleled criminal networks and murdering, add raping, become history.

Will the use of military force on Aristide be translated into another reality? It is not hard to imagine that clandestine voyages in perilous waters to Florida from Haiti - a main source country for trafficking of children, 250,000 to 300,000, for forced labor and sexual exploitation, according to the United States Department of State's Trafficking Persons Report 2003, which Castro, the old man, called "despicable," will, hopefully, cease to be orchestrated, with the intent of forcing the United States' hands to give dictator Aristide millions of dollars, in foreign aid. (Budget/revenues, $273 million, and expenditures, $361 million, including capital expenditures of $ NA, FY 00/01, est. Exports/imports imbalances are also measures that show how depressingly Haiti depends on foreign aid to help pay for most of the items, or 60 percent, of its budget, why it cannot service it external debt of $1.2 billion, 1995. Exports, $326.6 million f.o.b, 2001 and imports, $977.5 million c.i.f, 2001). 

Taken as a whole, today Haiti's crisis is one of the world's worst, and a threat for the United States. Granted, the minuscule Caribbean nation has old and new links to the United States - many Haitian forefathers arduously fought in the battle of Savannah (in the now state of Georgia) that also made the U.S. independence possible, a U.S.-based large Haitian-American population - but most importantly, it has geographic significance, less than two hours by plane from Florida. It is easy to understand why thousands of Haitian refugees (4,200 last year, a 50 percent increase over the year 2001 intercepted by Coast Guard authorities in the Bahamas alone while en route to Florida) continue to attempt to navigate shack infested waters, or the 700-mile route, to U.S. shores.

Millions of dollars here from drug kingpins, bribes there from terrorists. Terrorists, as the Haitian passport-carrying Iraqis arrested recently suggest, could easily slip into the United States among the boat people.

The use of military force to show corrupt Aristide the doors of the Haitian national palace will remain a treasured memory, and for a longtime so, for tens of thousands of poor Haitians who last year lost a combined sum of more than $220 million (approximately percent of Haiti's GDP, 2001 est.), in a credit union pyramid scam, which Aristide - the senior swindler, as the victims continue to call him, and to go as far as to demand that the United States, which returned him to power with a military occupation called "Operation Restore Democracy" in 1994, remove him - famously blessed.

Yves A. Isidor, who teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, is spokesperson for We Haitians United We Stand For Democracy and executive editor of wehaitians.com. 

*This column was adapted from a previous one written and first published in wehaitians.com by professor Yves A. Isidor, on May 7, 2003. The text above was supplemented by information from the Central Intelligence Agency World Fact Book, The World Bank of Development, and The International Monetary Fund.

Correspond with professor Yves A. Isidor via electronic mail: wehaitians@gis.net.com.

Amnesty International Report2003 / Powell's unpleasant words for hell-sent totalitarian dictator Aristide         

Wehaitians.com, the scholarly journal of democracy and human rights

More from wehaitians.com

Main / Columns / Books And Arts / Miscellaneous