06 March 2004

March Showers

Could it only be four years this day since three white New York police officers were convicted of a cover-up in a police station attack on Haitian immigrant Abner Louima?

Abner received a nice settlement from the cituy of New York, and he returned to his home island where he did charity works for the less fortunate. He was car-jacked in Port au Prince in the one-size-fits-all violence last week.

American Special Forces are running missions to disarm the former rebels who are now the government, or want to be, and thousands marched in front of the French and American embassies yesterday. They heckled the Marines who were sent to defend the facilities and enforce peace. Some of the Haitians threatened to open up an Iraqi-style resistance, based on the random detonation of high explosives.

Not that there are many to be found in Haiti. But U.S. special forces are running missions the facility to disarm the former rebels who now claim to be the government, and thousands marched in front of the French and U.S. embassies on Friday to protest. They jeered the Marines who were sent to protect the facility and enforce the peace.

The Administration must want to scrape this off their shoe, since there is no winning, only distraction. We stayed for a year the last time we intervened, and then quietly withdrew to leave the government to shift for itself. At least the military pulled out. We did not fulfill the civil action part of the mission. We still provided every seventh meal to the Haitian people, a half-measure just enough to keep the misery in status quo. Now we are stuck, having countenanced the ouster of the looney populist ex-Priest we re-installed just a couple years ago.

Haiti is a problem.

But it is not my problem this morning. It is raining here, a hard soaking rain that began sometime after I retired and continued with a steady hiss through my dreams right into the morning. This will complicate some of the errands I had planned, which was to start moving some of the detritus of the move to a little storage unit I have rented off Washington Boulevard. This may dictate some indoor chores. I clicked through the New York Times in an effort to delay the inevitable.

Saturday Morning is filled with promise and possibility. Once committed, though, it is altogether too soon that I will be in the airless conference room arguing with my interagency adversaries on the number and nature of metrics to determine the value of our Intelligence Community. It is mind numbing, and since the potential for change is great, the enterprise is fraught with career peril for all those concerned.

Almost all, anyway. I have to invent a new career anyway. Like Martha Strewart does.

I was mildly surprised to hear that the jury had convicted her on all the remaining counts in the indictment against her. I had come around on Martha. She was so easy to ridicule in the days of her greatest influence. "Time to disassemble the dog!" went one joke, which included her ten tips for updating city reservoirs with a kicky new look.

But as the trial went on I came to see her as a haggard symbol of the system out of control. Once she was worth a billion dollars, and now she is likely to lose the company. I am almost tempted to buy something in pastel to update my briefcase in solidarity. I clicked on through the story, looking at the pcitures of the defiant decorator vowing to continue the fight t herself over the measly $57.000 that brought her down.

Life is funny, isn't it, and not at all pert and kicky at times.

The Shia clerics in Iraq rejected the interim constitution on Friday, and temporary Viceroy Paul Bremer was embarrassed. They had the finger-food out and all the pens on a tray. It seems that the Shias wanted more representation on the governing council, and less for the plucky Kurds in the North. They apparently have been placated to the extent that they may sign on Monday and we can move on with our exit strategy.

I hope it goes better than the one in Haiti.