Haiti Descends Deeper Into Hell

Commentary By Arthur Piccolo

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. Oct. 7, 2024: As Haiti continues its freefall into total chaos, overwhelmed by violent gangs, mass murder, and a shattered civil society, the Biden-Harris administration’s continued failure to act is an indictment of U.S. foreign policy and an outright indefensible moral failure.

People carry a motorcycle driver injured in an accident while trying to pass on a road taken by people attempting to avoid gangs as they leave or return to Port-au-Prince, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, September 1, 2024. This road is increasingly frequented by passengers fleeing gang violence on National Route 2, linking Port-au-Prince to four other departments. The perilous journey on a rocky, cliff-lined road takes nearly seven hours for a journey that would normally take hours. About 580,000 Haitians have fled their homes due to gang violence, a 60 percent spike just since March, the UN International Organization for Migration reported June 18, 2024. (Photo by Clarens SIFFROY / AFP) (Photo by CLARENS SIFFROY/AFP via Getty Images)

Vice President Kamala Harris, with her Caribbean heritage, should be at the forefront of addressing this crisis. Yet, Harris’ silence is louder than gunfire that riddles Haiti’s streets, and her absence is even more glaring when her roots and platform could be pivotal in rallying American support for Haiti and Haitians.

Now making it worse at least 70 civilians, including babies, were slaughtered in the small town of Pont Sondé by the notorious Gran Grif gang this past weekend. Harris has avoided the topic as though Haiti was a distant island of little consequence. It’s not.

This is a horrible humanitarian disaster, right on America’s doorstep. Yet, Harris remains locked in the same tired rhetoric that sidesteps any meaningful action. Where is the outcry? The initiatives? The leadership?

And then there’s Donald Trump, offering nothing more than cheap shots, falsely accusing Haitian immigrants in the U.S. of absurdities like eating dogs, cats, and geese. His brain dead narrative is an appalling display of his lack of understanding and care for Haiti’s plight or its future, using it only as a tool for his xenophobic hateful rhetoric.

President Biden, aka Old Man Joe, increasingly senile, dithers in the shadows of his fading Presidency, uninterested in a substantial U.S. response beyond hollow promises and piecemeal efforts. Sending a few hundred Kenyans and some equipment says nothing other than the U.S. response remains woefully insufficient to address the reality that gangs now control Port-au-Prince, choking the nation’s ports and lifelines.  And now brutal  massacres in smaller towns as the war crimes of Haitian gangs expands.

The truth is this: whether it’s Harris, Trump, or Biden, the U.S. has no coherent policy for Haiti nor for the broader Caribbean and Latin American region nor indeed globally. The region’s instability has repercussions far beyond its borders, and the U.S. government’s disengagement is a betrayal of the core values it claims to uphold.The people of Haiti are bleeding, and all America offers are the deafening sounds of silence.