by Joe Emersberger and Jeb Sprague - HaitiAnalysis.com

The following is an interview conducted with Noam Chomsky over E-mail in late December of 2006.

Q: What do you think about the way the mainstream human rights groups - Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International - responded to the 2004 coup?

Not brilliantly.

Q: You noted that the US succeeded in securing outrageous concessions from Aristide before allowing him to return in 1994. However, don't the elections of 2000 - and the aid embargo and coup that followed - illustrate that terror did not work as effectively as feared? Didn't the US and its allies still perceive a serious threat from Aristide and the popular organizations?

I think that's plausible, though I suspect that in the case of France, it was outrage over the audacity of this little black clown daring to suggest politely to glorious France that it consider relieving some of the crushing indemnity it imposed on Haiti as the price of its liberation from French terror -- after France had enriched itself by brutally exploiting what had been the richest colony in the world.

Q: Do you think academics and the press have overwhelmingly neglected to discuss Fanmi Lavalas' (FL) opposition to privatization and its progressive achievements? Wasn't this the real reason behind the destabilization of Aristide? What lessons can be learned?

On FL, I don't know enough to comment. On destabilizing the Aristide regime, very little information is available . I think it is a fair guess that it is just another element of the Mafia Don mentality of Bush II, as compared to the more rational Clinton approach: to allow Aristide to return to power but on condition that he follow the harsh neoliberal programs that Haitians voted overwhelmingly against in the 1990 election, for good reasons: they were bound to destroy what was left of the economy, as they did, after Clinton's "liberation." It's possible that Aristide's social programs, however limited, contributed to the commitment to destroy the regime. The lessons that can be learned from the fate of the first free country of free men are, I am afraid, very ugly, from its early days as one of the richest colonies in the world and the source of much of France's wealth, to the exercise of "Wilsonian idealism" that destroyed much of what was left after French and US depredation, to the latest illustrations of hatred of democracy and cheerful crushing of the weak on the part of the leaders of the Western world.

Q: You've observed that a global movement against the war in Iraq came together before the war even began. That revealed that progress had been made since the Vietnam war - where serious opposition was much slower to develop. However, in the case of Haiti don't we see the opposite - regression rather than progress - in terms of how the world responded to the coup of 1991 and the coup of 2004?

There's no comparison. Vietnam and Iraq were flat-out cases of US aggression. The Haitian coups were the more normal forms of subversion. And there was virtually no response from the world in 1991 either. Bush I, then Clinton, blithely violated the OAS embargo and supported the junta. Did anyone do anything about it? Yes, a few did. I was there in 1993, at the height of the terror, and there were some activists. And there were a few support groups. But not a lot. In fact, so few that what happened is scarcely known. How many people know, for example, that Clinton authorized Texaco to supply oil to the Junta, violating presidential directives, while the CIA was testifying solemnly to Congress that no oil was getting in?

Q: What do you think explains the ability of Haitians to organize and persevere under the worst conditions? To what extent do you think it is the legacy of having driven out the French in 1804? Their ability to resist for centuries is incredible. But ultimately, terror takes its toll. Only a deep analysis of particular cultures can answer questions like these -- if at all. We don't understand much about topics as complex as human beings.

Q: A question comes up - even among people who go to talks put on by activists about Haiti. They ask "What is there in Haiti?" "Why does the US (or Canada) care so much about stifling basic reforms?" There aren't massive oil reserves (or anything like that) in Haiti so they don't get why rich countries would care to intervene in it at all. What do you think the best answer to that question is?

I've written about this a lot. Why was the US so intent on destroying northern Laos, so poor that peasants hardly even knew they were Laos? Or Indochina? Or Guatemala? Or Maurice Bishop in Grenada, the nutmeg capital of the world? The reasons are about the same, and are explained in the internal record. These are "viruses" that might "infect others" with the dangerous idea of pursuing similar paths to independent development. The smaller and weaker they are, the more dangerous they tend to be. If they can do it, why can't we? Does the Godfather allow a small storekeeper to get away with not paying protection money?