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Haiti: LaRouche Demands Urgent U.S. Action
To Prevent Rainy Season Devastation

February 2010

Tony Blair
A U.S. soldier distributes food to victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Photo: U.S. Department of Defense.

Lyndon LaRouche today issued an urgent call for the United States to send the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to work with the Haitian government to help relocate up to a million Haitians, now homeless and living amid the rubble of shattered Port-au-Prince in the aftermath of the January 12, 2010 earthquake that killed some 300,000 Haitians.

This has to happen before the rainy season, which will begin soon, he stated. He noted that the immediate emergency is that the rainy season is upon us, and under current conditions, Port-au-Prince within a month or two will be subjected to floods, hit by mudslides, and become inundated in deadly sewage from the 1.5 million people who are now homeless and destitute in that city. These are people who have no choice but to live in the streets and slums under ramshackle pieces of plastic, and amid human excrement that is not being removed—because there is no ability to do so, nor even a place to take it.

Haiti did not have a single sewage treatment plant even before the earthquake. It has long the victim of the globalization and free trade policies of London-centered financial predators.

LaRouche stressed that if we do not act, Haiti will soon face conditions in which dengue, cholera, malaria, typhoid and other epidemics will spread, with devastating consequences. Haiti is the image of what awaits all of humanity under the current, bankrupt British-imperial international financial system: it is the face of the New Dark Age. We must stop it in Haiti, if we are to have the moral fitness to survive on this planet.

Tony Blair
Ace construction excavator . Photo: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

To prevent another wave of mass deaths and total national disintegration, LaRouche advocated that a bilateral treaty agreement between the United States and Haiti should be promptly reached, designed to evacuate up to a million people from this potentially deadly situation into the United States on an interim basis, and possibly into inland parts of Haiti as well. Under a reasonable Presidency, the U.S. can mobilize the capacity to do that, and he stated that the United States can further use its military capacity, through the Army Corps of Engineers, to either rebuild semi-permanent housing, or reopen military bases with barracks, including those shut down under the BRAC commission.

Full reconstruction in Haiti will take up to 25 years, LaRouche has pointed out, but in the short term it is possible to build new relocation camps and even cities outside of Port-au-Prince, where the essentials of life can be provided: food, water, sanitation, a roof over their heads, and sufficient energy and electricity to make all this possible. Even under a dysfunctional, impeachable President Obama, the United States must act, and act quickly, LaRouche stated.

In his Jan. 30 international webcast, LaRouche responded to a question about Haiti, saying that the United States has to take the kind of approach that Presidents like Lincoln and Roosevelt did:

Tony Blair
Construction of Lake Shelbyville Dam. Photo: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

"You cannot apply a band-aid to Haiti. And you can not bring in many other countries, because the objective is, if the country is going to be viable, coming out of this mess, you have to have a sovereign Haiti. So, the contract has to be essentially, a United States treaty agreement, a treaty agreement to re-establish the efficient sovereignty of the nation of Haiti, after the destructive effect of this and preceding difficulties..."

"[Haiti] is a small nation, of people who have been subjected to all kinds of terrible history; who have been promised this, and betrayed, and promised that, and betrayed, and promised and betrayed. Never delivered. It's in a group of national territories which has also tended to be somewhat of a mess, in one way or the other. So, therefore, it's a model approach: We make a contract with the government, as a treaty agreement, between the United States and Haiti, to assure the rebuilding of their country, in a form in which it will actually be a functioning country which can survive."


Obama Says No to Emergency Evacuation
Of Haitians to High Ground;
Impeachment is the Answer

Reliable sources have informed LaRouchepac that institutional leaders within the U.S. Presidency, and "old hands" on Haiti, all concur that the Army Corps of Engineers should undertake an immediate, emergency evacuation of about one million Haitians from the squalor of Port-au-Prince, to elevated areas of Haiti before the rainy season arrives in April— rather than an evacuation of Haitians to the U.S. These experts warn of an explosion of diseases such as TB, diarrhea, and malaria in the capital, as the "second phase" of the earthquake, which could be as deadly as the first, or worse.

When this "Army Corps of Engineers" approach for rapid evacuation of the Haitians before the rainy season was presented to Barack Obama, he responded with a very firm "No," said the sources. This calls for the immediate impeachment of Obama.

Obama vetoed saving the lives of a million Haitians because he thinks it would be seen as a second Jimmy Carter "Haitian boatlift,"—i.e., bad public relations. The Obama White House, currently entirely oriented to poll numbers, press, and perceptions, absolutely ruled out an evacuation, because they could care less about the death of hundreds of thousands of Haitians.

American statesman Lyndon LaRouche said, "You must change the Presidency and get rid of Obama. Civilization is at stake. Sometimes you must make a decision, rather than just select from offered choices."

Moving in the wrong direction

There are indications on the ground that some forces are already pulling out of Haiti.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that some medical teams are leaving Haiti this week, while between 25-30% of post-earthquake surgeries (thousands) need to be redone, because they were done hastily, and under unsanitary conditions immediately after the hurricane. Today, the U.S. is pulling its crew out of a field hospital next to HIV/AIDS center Gheskio; it was thought that the U.S. team would stay until mid-March. The medical ship USNC Comfort is phasing out patients. It has 50 patients, and is taking no more. The Canadian ship HMCS Halifax and its crew, deployed for humanitarian efforts, left Feb. 20. Canadian forces pulled out today.

The Public Affairs Office of the Southern Command confirmed to EIR that it is preparing to redeploy 400 members of the 82nd Airborne Brigade, but says the redeployment is "not time-based," but will be determined by evaluations that other forces can assume the responsiblities.

 

Related pages:

The U.S. Debt to Haiti

The Four Powers Vs. the British Empire 

Economics Page 

Lyndon LaRouche Webcast: The End of the Obama Administration   January 30, 2010