Commentary by Arthur Piccolo
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. October 7, 2024: As Haiti continues its free fall into total chaos, overrun by violent gangs, mass killings and a crumbling civil society, the continued failure of the Biden-Harris administration to act is an indictment of US foreign policy- and a complete and undefended moral failure.
Vice President Kamala Harris, with her Caribbean heritage, should be at the forefront of addressing this crisis. Still, Harris’ silence is louder than the gunfire that shakes the streets of Haiti, and her absence is all the more glaring when her roots and platform could be crucial in rallying American support for Haiti and Haitians. .
Now making it worse, at least 70 civilians, including babies, were massacred in the small town of Pont Sondé by the notorious Gran Grif gang last weekend. Harris has avoided the subject as if Haiti were a remote island of little consequence. It is not.
This is a terrible humanitarian disaster, right on America’s doorstep. Yet Harris remains locked in the same tired rhetoric that sidesteps any meaningful action. Where is the cry? Initiatives? The leadership?
And then there’s Donald Trump, who offers nothing more than cheap shots, falsely accusing Haitian immigrants in the US of absurdities like eating dogs, cats and geese. His deadpan confession is a terrible display of his lack of understanding and care for Haiti’s plight or its future, using it only as a vehicle for his xenophobic hateful rhetoric.
President Biden, known as Old Man Joe, increasingly elderly, recedes into the shadows of his fading Presidency, uninterested in a substantive US response beyond empty promises and partial efforts. Sending a few hundred Kenyans and some equipment says nothing but the US response remains woefully insufficient to address the reality that gangs now control Port-au-Prince, suffocating the country’s ports and lifelines. And now brutal massacres in smaller towns as Haitian gang war crimes expand.
The truth is this: whether it’s Harris, Trump or Biden, the US does not have a coherent policy for Haiti, nor for the wider Caribbean and Latin American region, nor globally. The region’s instability has ramifications far beyond its borders, and the US government’s non-engagement is a betrayal of the core values it claims to uphold. The people of Haiti are bleeding and all America has to offer is the deafening sound of silence.
