Aristide

According to Forbes Magazine, Haiti is the world's most corrupt nation.

Once upon a time, in 1968, when America was burning, my father considered very seriously the possibility of emigrating to Haiti or Ghana. The Haiti part I remember, Ghana not so well. To the extent that many of us raised in the 60s remember passions for Pan Africanism, we retain something of a gut instinct for revering black leaders around the world, and for the most part giving them the benefit of the doubt when they give America the finger.

But I cannot seem to remember exactly how it was that Jean Bertrand Aristide went wrong, nor quite frankly what he did that was so right in the first place. Can you remember?

I think most Americans can go through a year without thinking about Haiti. Of all Caribbean folks, Haitians are the most reviled. They are also seen as the most intensely political. I can tell you this from personal experience living in Brooklyn. I used to get my haircuts at a Haitian barbershop. There is nothing we need from Haiti and to be sure Haitians live better in Brooklyn than anywhere in Haiti.

As Democrats around the country express their desire for isolationism, I think of the 80s when we pushed around little weenie nations in our hemisphere. We did it covertly. Nobody could accurately pin anything on us. If GWBush is a liar and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are patsies, the one thing every Democrat can do is recite the big lie. We all have a very clear idea of why we went to Iraq. But who knows why we were in Haiti, that is, if we actually were there. What makes Aristide different than Saddam?

Obviously, I don't want to be part of the geopolitical withdrawal. I think we should be out there as Thomas PM Barnett says, with a Big War department and a Big SysAdmin department. And I think that the UN should have some role to play in that.

This is all a question of internal empire versus external empire. There doesn't seem to be any contradiction in the Democrat line. Let everybody become an American, just dismantle the Big War department open the borders and spend the money on bilingual education. No hypocrisy there. No standards either, but even Rush Limbaugh knows that. I'm for a combination of both empires, with stricter rules for the internal empire. But that's just me.

I'm drawing a blank. I'm finding it difficult to remember why any such country as Haiti should exist at all.