Dictator: Two Approaches

Dictator: Two Approaches

Here are two articles about the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the Caribbean. Notice the difference in tone. The first apparently likes dictators and men who use hit squads to silence opposition. The second does not.

Aristide Back in Caribbean Heat

Some members of Congress, including Waters, have called for an investigation of the U.S. role in Aristide's ouster. Waters, interviewed during the flight to pick up Aristide, rejected Bush administration assertions that Aristide, a former slum priest, had caused recent strife in Haiti through questionable elections and a turn away from democracy.

Suddenly his running for his life to avoid execution by the rebels becomes an "ouster", assuming that the US forced him out.

Aristide leaves exile to visit Jamaica

Mr. Patterson, who heads Caricom, has irritated U.S. officials over the past two weeks by giving credence to Mr. Aristide's claim that the United States kidnapped him and shuttled him out of the country provoking a sharp and unusual public rebuke by the U.S. ambassador to Jamaica, Sue M. Cobb.
"Those words were heard by willing ears, resulting in surprisingly inflammatory rhetoric and an environment of hostility that I can only call markedly disappointing and unsophisticated in analysis," Mrs. Cobb wrote in an opinion piece published March 7 in the London Observer.
She said Mr. Aristide triggered his own downfall with his use of "mob violence and hit squads as a policy for several years and his endorsement of assassinations of journalists who dared to criticize his actions." . . .

Caricom's leaders have had an up-and-down relationship with Mr. Aristide since he started to lose his grip on power in recent months.
In January, Mr. Patterson expressed concern about rights abuses in Haiti, Caricom's newest member. He called on Mr. Aristide to release imprisoned university students and threatened unspecified sanctions against Haiti if Mr. Aristide failed to improve his governance.

Apparently, the shame and criminality of imprisoning students etc. evaporates when you claim that the US done you wrong. So because this brutal assassin ordering tyrant claims he was forced out, suddenly Caricom should support him rather than condemn him as they had two months previously.