Clumsy sponsors of freedom
Anthony Daniels
THE IMMACULATE INVASION by Bob Shacochis Bloomsbury, £16.99, pp. 422 According to the Clintonian-Blairite view of the world, war is the continuation of social work by other means, at least as presented for public consumption. Of course, underneath the high-falutin moral- ising and talk of universal human rights, motives that would be considered less cred- itable by their supporters may still be sus- pected: for example, I have long surmised that one of Clinton's reasons for ordering the invasion of Haiti in 1994 to restore President Aristide to power was to curb the flood of Haitian refugees to Miami. Once Aristide was safely back in the presidential palace in Port au Prince, Haitians could be regarded as economic migrants rather than political refugees, and returned to sender. This book is a blow-by-blow account of the invasion by an American journalist of liberal views who accompanied American forces and remained in Haiti until they left. Like many such journalists, he mistakes length for thoroughness, but brevity is the soul of wit nonetheless. Ryszard Kapuscinski — from whom he quotes would have produced a book a third as long and ten times as profound. The writing is both hip and pedantic, an unfortunate stylistic combination. The author's use of metaphor is frequently and disturbingly inexact: for example, 'Lavalas [Aristide's political movement] had divided like an amoeba, each cell at the other's throat.' At one point a US Marine captain in charge of an entire district is compared to a Roman procurator rather than to a proconsul. And the high ratio of expletives to reported utterances is supposed to stand guarantor of the writing's gritty realism. The author was torn between a habitual suspicion of American armed intervention anywhere and a desire to see the reinstate- ment of President Aristide, the parfit gentil (radical leftist) knyght of Haitian politics: parfit, that is, until he came actually to exercise power. But the reinstatement of Aristide could have been achieved only by American invasion. The author was thus in something of a quandary, not quite know- ing what attitude to take. One nevertheless senses several times in the book a surrepti- tious or illicit pride in the display of Ameri- can power, which for once was exercised on the side of the liberal angels.
Alas, it soon became apparent to Mr Shacochis that the invasion would achieve less than he had hoped, because the Amer- ican forces did not support his preferred policy, a wholesale leftist transformation of Haitian society. Indeed, the invasion began to look distinctly futile when its comman- der suggested that his aim was to produce a safe environment for US forces. In other words, US forces invaded Haiti in order to ensure their own safety. Presumably they would have been safer at home.
When, all too predictably, post-invasion Haiti began closely to resemble pre- invasion Haiti, Mr Shacochis strikes an almost elegiac note:
Despite what one hopes are best intentions to change the world in our own image, we are clumsy sponsors of freedom, proud but graceless and self-subverting.
One can only hope that this reflection suc- cessfully subverts the liberal urge to tilt at windmills, an urge that is composed of naivety, goodwill and arrogance.
One aspect of this book angered me: the treatment meted out to Dr Paul Hodges, a Baptist missionary doctor in Limbe, just south of Cap Haitien. Mr Shacochis repeat- edly suggests that Dr Hodges, who has spent most of his working life in Haiti, is a shady businessman, accumulating wealth for himself and his family:
The Hodgeses were a for-profit operation. They had built themselves an enclave of estates . . . on the road to Bas Limbe, and didn't look kindly upon destitute customers and unscheduled charity.
This is as disgraceful a slur as I have ever seen in print. The last time I met Dr Hodges he was more than 70 years old, thoroughly exhausted by his examination of hundreds of patients who crowded every morning to his hospital. I don't share Dr Hodges's religious beliefs, and indeed can- not conceive of myself wishing to convert anybody to anything, but I greatly admire his dedication to his medical work, and there must be scores of thousands of Haitians who have reason to be thankful to him for giving them the medical care they would otherwise have lacked completely.
Dr Hodges is also an amateur archaeolo- gist of distinction, who has done much to preserve the material remains of Haiti's past and who founded a museum devoted to Haitian history (Haiti isn't exactly full of museums). He discovered the site of Columbus's landing and the first Spanish settlement on Hispaniola. When I last visit- ed him, he had not only abandoned his beloved archaeology for the sake of his overwhelmingly many patients, but had for- gone his anticipated retirement. I don't think a man does this for the sordid rea- sons suggested in this book.
I suspect that the author is so defam- atory of Dr Hodges because of a visceral aversion to evangelical Christianity (an aversion I share). If so, he is exceptionally small-minded, despite his pretensions to generosity of spirit.
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