USA should not be in haiti

[DeLamar.J]

Before i get flamed, at least hear me out. We have people in the USA who are homeless, losing there homes, not getting proper medical care, ect ect if your here you know whats going on in our economy.
Before we reach out to help others, shouldn't we at least make sure that every AMERICAN has the help they need? We have people struggling in our country and we go to another country and drop millions? If you want to help, go to down town cleveland and help some of the starving homeless people there, why do americans feel the need to travel to another place to help people when OUR OWN need help. I don't understand it and it annoys the hell out of me.

 

[Omar B]

So what you're saying is, in times of crisis where minutes, hours and days means more life lost we should stay out. Sure.

 

[DeLamar.J]

No, what I'm saying is, why are we not helping own own struggling people? Why fly to another place when there are people in your community that are in need of help.
If you want to do good things for people, get in your car and drive down the street, I'm positive there is a struggling family close by. We are having issues in our own country that should be resolved before we go spending millions on other non americans.

 

[Omar B]

Because Cleavland, Ohio or down the street was not hit with a series of earthquakes and those people have not had their whole life, all their possessions and their loved ones crushed by debris. The people in Cleavland, Ohio or down the street still live in a country with working infrastructure, where as in Haiti the ability to feed, water or medically help itself has been crippled.

 

[DeLamar.J]

There are hard working americans who need help, who contribute to the government by paying taxes. What does haiti contribute? nothing. They take, take, and take some more. They contribute nothing to us and take much.
But on the other hand, we have american tax payers, who contribute everyday, and struggle, lose there homes, and pay tax to help....guess who, haiti.

 

[Tez3]

No, what I'm saying is, why are we not helping own own struggling people? Why fly to another place when there are people in your community that are in need of help.
If you want to do good things for people, get in your car and drive down the street, I'm positive there is a struggling family close by. We are having issues in our own country that should be resolved before we go spending millions on other non americans.

Ok we'll remember that next time you have a disaster like Hurricane Katrina and we all sent help..

You may wish to look at some of the reasons Haiti is so poor and the involvement of America in keeping it that way. Have a look at 'sugar' and sugar tariffs etc. Also look up the 19 year Military Occupation of Haiti by the Americans. Then move onto the CIA involvement in the 80s with drugs, corruption etc.
Perhaps you should have kept and stayed out of Haiti's business a long long time ago and they wouldn't have needed so much help now.

 

[Omar B]

So you wish to not help anyone because they are from another country and don't pay taxes here. I guess all the other countries helping Haiti should pull up and leave too. Same way they they pulled out and left New Orleans after Katrina ... oh wait, other countries actually helped then too.

I'm quite sure that picking up leaving them without electricity, running water, communication, roads, hospitals won't result in thousands more catastrophic death.

 

[Ken Morgan]

Ok we'll remember that next time you have a disaster like Hurricane Katrina and we all sent help..

You may wish to look at some of the reasons Haiti is so poor and the involvement of America in keeping it that way. Have a look at 'sugar' and sugar tariffs etc. Also look up the 19 year Military Occupation of Haiti by the Americans. Then move onto the CIA involvement in the 80s with drugs, corruption etc.
Perhaps you should have kept and stayed out of Haiti's business a long long time ago and they wouldn't have needed so much help now.

Plus let’s not forget the Canadian forest firefighters who cross the border every season to help battle fires, or the Canadian coast guard who rescues American sailors, or any number of other cross border help that goes on.

You're either part of the world or you're not. I understand what you're saying, I really do, but if you want to be involved in the world, you're either all in or you’re not. If you choose an isolationist policy then you need to live with the consequences, that means hundreds of billions in trade drying up, millions more unemployed, amongst other things.

There are choices to be made. The argument can be made that if the $$ that goes into a weeks worth of US military spending were spent on the poor and helpless, the US would be all the better for it.

 

[Omar B]

Ok we'll remember that next time you have a disaster like Hurricane Katrina and we all sent help..

You may wish to look at some of the reasons Haiti is so poor and the involvement of America in keeping it that way. Have a look at 'sugar' and sugar tariffs etc. Also look up the 19 year Military Occupation of Haiti by the Americans. Then move onto the CIA involvement in the 80s with drugs, corruption etc.
Perhaps you should have kept and stayed out of Haiti's business a long long time ago and they wouldn't have needed so much help now.

You forgot to mention the CIA's ousting of Haiti's elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide because he wasn't going to go along with business as usual with the US military occupation. The man had to run away from his own country in the middle of the night and hide out in Jamaica from CIA hitmen. Of course you'll never hear about CIA hitmen trying to kill the president (and Roman Catholic Priest) of a 3rd world country and him having to hide in other countries while the US installs yet another puppet. Gotta love watching that news in the US.

 

[JDenver]

This style of argument is really a paper tiger.

It's great that you feel strongly about helping Americans, but don't be so callously isolationist about things. Be a human being ahead of being an American. For example, what if I told you that your country, the wealthiest in the world, doesn't even hit spending .7% of GDP in other countries? That only leaves a puny 99.3% spending of American money in America.

In fact, you could solve all of America's social problems. Stop building roads. Curb your military spending. No funding for schools or hospitals, funnel it to other areas. Put a cap on income levels or tax the wealthiest 2% above 50% and refunnel that money. That would solve it. Being in Haiti has almost nothing to do with it.

 

[Tez3]

There are hard working americans who need help, who contribute to the government by paying taxes. What does haiti contribute? nothing. They take, take, and take some more. They contribute nothing to us and take much.
But on the other hand, we have american tax payers, who contribute everyday, and struggle, lose there homes, and pay tax to help....guess who, haiti.

I think you'll find America has had more than it's pound of flesh out of Haiti, time to give something back I'd say. You owe them mate, you owe them. Open your eyes and learn your history.

 

[Omar B]

I think you'll find America has had more than it's pound of flesh out of Haiti, time to give something back I'd say. You owe them mate, you owe them. Open your eyes and learn your history.

Quite true Tez, though I was taking the issue from a stopping the loss of life where you can standpoint. There's the side that I didn't think about till you posted, the US's interference in other countries that is never go reported.

Luckily I've got a different perspective being born in another country. Like why were there US military bases and airfields dotting Jamaica. My father grew up next to one that was on no map called Camp Hill, when the US shut down operations there the government the name to Kemp's Hill and now it shows up on maps! Or the airfield named Vernam Field close to Camp Hill where American planes came in all day and night flying out of Jamaica to observe Cuba, my father grew up watching this and spending time at my grandparents homes I've seen this for myself.

 

[Tez3]

Like it or not America has interfered in a lot of countries politics and civil disputes, always for America's good, never for the natives of that country.
Britian has done it's fair share in the past of messing around with countries but not for a very long time now and anyway I'm not the person whinging about my country saving lives in another. We sent help, rescue teams, money, help etc and I've never heard anyone say we shouldn't have done it. Here even the children fund raised to save people poorer than themselves.
Haiti has a very sad history, left to itself perhaps it wouldn't be as poor as it is now, it certainly didn't start as a poor country.

 

[The Last Legionary]

Ask the mayor of Cleveland if hed really like the US Army to take over police work in his city, declare martial law, and so on.

 

[Marginal]

Before i get flamed, at least hear me out. We have people in the USA who are homeless, losing there homes, not getting proper medical care, ect ect if your here you know whats going on in our economy.
Before we reach out to help others, shouldn't we at least make sure that every AMERICAN has the help they need? We have people struggling in our country and we go to another country and drop millions? If you want to help, go to down town cleveland and help some of the starving homeless people there, why do americans feel the need to travel to another place to help people when OUR OWN need help. I don't understand it and it annoys the hell out of me.

If you want an equally cold rationale, if you don't help them there, then they'll probably flee their country creating more sour illegal immigrant threads.

 

[Touch Of Death]

Before i get flamed, at least hear me out. We have people in the USA who are homeless, losing there homes, not getting proper medical care, ect ect if your here you know whats going on in our economy.
Before we reach out to help others, shouldn't we at least make sure that every AMERICAN has the help they need? We have people struggling in our country and we go to another country and drop millions? If you want to help, go to down town cleveland and help some of the starving homeless people there, why do americans feel the need to travel to another place to help people when OUR OWN need help. I don't understand it and it annoys the hell out of me.

Our poorest live better than 98% them!
Sean

 

[Blade96]

Before i get flamed, at least hear me out. We have people in the USA who are homeless, losing there homes, not getting proper medical care, ect ect if your here you know whats going on in our economy.
Before we reach out to help others, shouldn't we at least make sure that every AMERICAN has the help they need? We have people struggling in our country and we go to another country and drop millions? If you want to help, go to down town cleveland and help some of the starving homeless people there, why do americans feel the need to travel to another place to help people when OUR OWN need help. I don't understand it and it annoys the hell out of me.

I think this little fella has his heart in the right place. He wants to help people in his own country. Well and good. go for it. BUT......

Because Cleavland, Ohio or down the street was not hit with a series of earthquakes and those people have not had their whole life, all their possessions and their loved ones crushed by debris. The people in Cleavland, Ohio or down the street still live in a country with working infrastructure, where as in Haiti the ability to feed, water or medically help itself has been crippled.

......I was gonna say this. DeLamar, your country wasnt the one hit with some ungodly huge freakin earthquake at the beginning of 2010 that killed at least 200,000 qand injured how many more.

and if you were, we would help you.

 

[David43515]

I think it`s just a matter of perspective. Like someone mentioned earlier, Cleveland or any other city in the US has a functioning infrastructure. Yeah we have people who are out of work and on the streets, but we have lots of people here helping them. We have government agencies and private volunteer groups that are there to support them and try to get them the help they need, so that eventually most of them have a fighting chance to pull themselves up by thier bootsraps and get back into the race with the rest of us.

in Haiti, all that support structure was gone overnight. Everyone was homeless. There was no fresh water, no supermarket, no hospital for the survivors. And there was no organized govt effort to help search the rubble for the living, because the people in the govt were just as bad off as everyone else.

It kind of harkens back to FDR`s explaination of the lend lease program before we entered WWII. If your neighbor`s house is on fire, and you have a hose you let them borrow it. In this case they`re too busy fighting the fire to come and get it, so you turn on the water yourself and try to lend a hand where you can.

What you don`t do it say "I`ve got to finish fixing my leaky roof first."

 

[Thesemindz]

I think you'll find America has had more than it's pound of flesh out of Haiti, time to give something back I'd say. You owe them mate, you owe them. Open your eyes and learn your history.

Easy there Tez.

I don't owe them anything. I didn't do anything to them in the first place. Others may have in my name, but it was either without my knowledge or against my express wishes. I can't be held responsible for evil done by others.

You want to help Haiti with your own money, feel free. In fact I think that's admirable and commendable. But you can not attach moral value to actions taken under duress.

The government money which has gone to the legitimate victims of both foreign and domestic state oppression and natural disasters was itself extracted from private citizens at the point of a sword. This doesn't make things "squaresies," it simply further spreads violence.

If you want to feel good about helping others, encourage people to give, not to take.


-Rob

 

[Touch Of Death]

I really don't understand the mentality of keeping, Cuba, Haiti, Central, and South America Dirt poor. Can't we give eachother a hand up instead of isolating ourselves from the rest of the world? If we did go ahead and let millions die and suffer after a tragedy, most people will cross the street to avoid giving money to a homeless guy for beer.
Sean