I agree with Samosamo. My first reaction to the announcement that 10,000 US troops were being dispatched to Haiti was Why? They need medical personnel, field hospitals and heavy equipment not men with guns. Then I researched the history of Haiti, curious as to how such utter poverty could exist in the Western Hemisphere, poverty that makes Bangladeshi garment workers seem privileged in comparison. 80% of the population lives on less than $2.00 a day. They have no water, no food and no electricity. Almost every minute of the day a Haitian child dies of starvation. 1% of the population owns all the wealth. They live lives of unbelievable privilege without any urge to share the country’s wealth with the impoverished majority. Most of the impoverished live in and around Port au Prince. They are the remnants and descendants of the agrarian class which was forced off the land by US agri-business. This lead to the movement of people off the land to the city inb search of work. The US plan was to set up manufacturing plants and use the displaced and desperate people as a source of slave wage labour. But the US got distracted by other concerns and abandoned their plans leaving a country with huge unemployment and an inability to feed itself or support basic infrastructure. Although this scenario played out before the term became common the Haitian situation is the ultimate consequence of globalisation.
Mention has been made of the need for a Marshall type plan to set Haiti on the road to recovery. It is the setting up of just such a plan that has Haiti in the state it was in at the time of the earthquake. The most important thing is to control the US and not permit them to be in the driver’s seat regarding reconstruction. The UN is also compromised by their actions in protecting the interests of the Haitian elite rather than defending the poor. The Canadians and French were all complicit with the US in the removal of the democratically elected President Aristide. There is probably not one Western nation qualified to build a fair society - free of interference from the US, the World Bank and the rest of the global exploiters. The one nation that has all the qualifications to get the job done is Cuba. Had they not had the good fortune to be saved from US control by Fidel Castro they would no doubt be in the same situation today as Haiti. They may not have much materially but they have their pride , their health and enough to eat. Interesting to note that the Cuban medics who were already on the island had field hospitals set up and completed 90 surgeries within hours of the earthquake. This is in comparison to the US who’s first reaction was to send in men with guns. Of course even in their homeland the US sends in guns first - New Orleans was a horrifying example of this - secure tv and liquor stores first - rescue fellow citizens whenever.
Interesting also to note that the Chinese got their men on the ground ahead of the US. Recent reports indicate that there may well be significant gold deposits in Haiti. Hmmmm.

By rfidler, January 16 at 7:50 pm #

samosamo:
“I would rather think that those 10,000 and I assume fully armed troops are going to protect the on coming corporate raiders…”

Which is why your ideas will forever dwell on the lunatic fringe.

Uh oh, I see straw men…The funny thing is that samosamo is not on the so-called ‘lunatic fringe.’  There is substantial evidence of the brash levels of tampering the US government and US businesses have done to Haiti, for the worst, for many decades.

“The U.S. government, the UN, and other powers have aided the Haitian elite in subjecting the country to neoliberal economic plans that have impoverished the masses, deforested the land, wrecked the infrastructure and incapacitated the government.

The fault line of U.S. imperialism interacted with the geological one to turn the natural disaster into a social catastrophe.

During the Cold War, the U.S. supported the dictatorships of Papa Doc Duvalier and then Baby Doc Duvalier—which ruled the country from 1957 to 1986—as an anti-communist counter-weight to Castro’s Cuba nearby.

Under guidance from Washington, Baby Doc Duvalier opened the Haitian economy up to U.S. capital in the 1970s and 1980s. Floods of U.S. agricultural imports destroyed peasant agriculture. As a result, hundred of thousands of people flocked to the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince to labor for pitifully low wages in sweatshops located in U.S. export processing zones.

In the 1980s, masses of Haitians rose up to drive the Duvaliers from power—later, they elected reformer Jean-Bertrand Aristide to be president on a platform of land reform, aid to peasants, reforestation, investment in infrastructure for the people, and increased wages and union rights for sweatshop workers.

The U.S. in turn backed a coup that drove Aristide from power in 1991. Eventually, the elected president was restored to power in 1994 when Bill Clinton sent U.S. troops to the island—but on the condition that he implement the U.S. neoliberal plan—which Haitians called the “plan of death.”“
http://www.counterpunch.org/smith01142010.html

According to “Toxic Sludge is Good For You,” by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier was a client of the US PR firm Gray & Company (pg 151).  After Duvalier was kicked out and fled, Americans represented the remaining junta, even taking money from it.  One lobbyist is Robert McCandless.  He also represented a group of American businessmen “headed by Gregory Brandt” that had interests in Haiti that “included cooking oil, cars, tomato paste, and coffee” (152).  This was at a time when there was a US embargo on the junta, and McCandless was asked by the US govt to stop representing a regime the govt had an embargo against.  McCandless took over 100,000 dollars from the junta as part of his contract.  I recommend reading the rest of the section, because there’s a lot of well-sourced information I don’t have room to type.

other sources to check out: 

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23640
http://www.zmag.org/zvideo/3323
http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick01152010.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/dimaggio01152010.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/reeves01152010.html

All you did was attack his intelligence, NOT debate his claims by well thought out counter-arguments with sources.  This is what Bill O does all of the time.

Remember the Big Tsunami a few years ago?  Why weren’t two former US presidents (like how Obama appointed Bush and Clinton whom both served in administrations that interfered with Haiti) brought in to help with the aid situation in that case?  Why weren’t 10,000 troops brought in after the Tsunami as is the case with Haiti and the earthquake?  Why did the US give nearly the least amount of aid monies in the tsunami situation, and gave the most out of all the donating countries in the case of Haiti?

The answer is because there are American corporate interests in Haiti.