Actually I wondered the same.

Venezuelan president Hugh Chavez - well he would say that wouldn't he?

having watched a few videos of helicopters not daring to land because of the 'mob' attitude below, and all the reports of major looting, even of the emergency supplies, is it any wonder an army is needed?

The helicopter crews were having to throw the supplies out of the door whilst in flight because there were 100s of people in a mob frenzy. There really isn't any room for organisation in that kind of desparation.

The US and France shoulder equal blame for Haiti getting to the sorry state it is in now... the USA perhaps more so given it's proximity and evil trade embargo and subsidised crop dumping which meant Haitians can no longer live off their own land...

... but now isn't the time to appoint blame.

Now is the time for aid, not cynically accusing Obama of covertly occupying.

And even if he was, at least there might be some semblance of order arising from a temporary occupation.

Yeah, you're right.. I think they should actually bomb them, too, and then go and help them. Or just help them by putting them out of their misery, just shoot them, or bomb them and shoot survivors.. Just to help them, of course.. Maybe torture them too, just to make their lives more interesting.. You know what I like most about us westerners? The fact that we're just so goddamn liberal!

So Chavez is misinformed then. Utterly reactionary comment to shore up his statist hegemony dressed up as left platformism. The simple FACT is that military troops are needed in Haiti immediately 9should have been in from day-1) to distribute aid so that ALL people are getting fed and watered - so that gangs do not hoard aid and sell on black market (which will happen to some extent whatever).

This should have been UN troops - why does it take Ban Ki Moon 6 days to say there needs to be more troops on the ground. His half-hearted direction of how the UN deals with a major humanitarian crisis is seen again, as it was in his shocking, disgraceful ineptitude in preventing war crimes and genocide in Sri Lanka.

US is logically close to Haiti, so it is common sense for them to assist their neighbour, as well as being the US' moroal obligation to assist their poverty-stricken neighbour. The French may take issue with US troops being too heavly involved, but where are they? They were the former colonial power who bled the country dry for compensation for many many years after the slave rebellion of 1791. US is logically close to Haiti, so it is common sense for them to assist their neighbour, as well as being the US' moroal obligation to assist their poverty-stricken neighbour

The presence of soldiers is not suprising, as most large aid organizations have legality issues that require an area to be 'secured' to an extent before the organization can operate. The fact that it is American soldiers is unsuprising, as it is the closest country to Haiti after the Dominican Republic (with whom Haiti has never had brilliant relations).

On the UN aspect...the UN doesn't have its own army, so all military interventions (whether for aid, politics, overseeing treaties etc) is usually overseen by the Department of Peace-Keeping Operations. The DPKO is notoriously bureacratic, taking large quantities of time and paper-work to justify an operation- even in an obvious emergency. It needs the security council to vet and agree on a force comander, countries to volunteer soldiers and supplies, and the security council to outline a mandate. It is usually America that tends to draw out proceedings, due to the Battle of Mogadishu (see how this later drastically affected the UN's response to the crisis in Rwanda) and of course its own interests. So unforunately until the UN has its own force (never going to happen) or figures out how to cut all the red tape in times of crisis (v. unlikely), it's for the best that America stepped up with an immediate response due to its wealth and proximity to Haiti. We'll have to wait and see whether they leave once the job is done, are replaced by Peace-keepers or decide to stay indefinately.

Also, France WOULD say that, having been Haiti's opressors and trying to shift any kind of blame from the mark their colonial rule left...

p.s.
for anyone interested in how peace-keeping works and how the UN operates it, I suggest reading Shake Hands With The Devil: Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Lt.Gen. Romeo Dallaire

we'll see in a couple of years if USA has any longer term 'ambitions' for Haiti - pretty sure it will include world bank and IMF loans........tied in, of course with lucrative "rebuilding" contracts factored in to the small print, all work for western companies.
we'll see...........

Alain Joyandet, French co-operation minister, told reporters at the airport he had protested to Washington via the US ambassador about the US military’s management of the airport where he said a French medical aid flight had been turned away.

From The Guardian (Monday 18th Jan):
John O'Shea , the head of the Irish medical charity, Goal: "You have the US military doing their thing at the airport. You have the United Nations saying we're in control of food distribution but the United Nations is not taking the pro-active role that they should be taking.

Ban Ki Moon previously stated that all aid to Haiti should be coordinated with the UN. If so, why are Médecins Sans Frontières complaining that vital medical supplies are still not being distributed? Médecins Sans Frontières have recently revealed that they even had to buy vital equipment for amputation on the black market in Haiti to carry out vital operations on people needing urgent medical treatment.

What the US role is achieving, as the only global power with the military power to intervene on this scale, is to continue it's tendency for being useful idiots - making too slow progress in providing distribution of aid (they could have been parachuting aid into affected areas as soon as the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier arrived off the coast of Haiti on Jan 15th), and doing so in a flawed manner. However, the manner of their intervention in comination with the ineffectiveness of the UN also hints at an underlying sinister agenda. Has a bureacratic red-tape inertia at the top effectively caused slow genocide here? Why were people even living in camps next to the airport still without food and water 5 days after the quake when aid planes had been coming in for 2 days? The whole lack of effective urgency in relation to the monumental scale of tragedy reeks of racist expediance of a forlorn people not valued by the white skinned rich world, and in particular, the global governance hierachy including a few establishment NGOs.

Re: earlier comments I made about Chavez, I wonder why Venezuela didn't just send troops over to intervene themselves in some way (Ie insist on assisting securing the airport).


19/2010
Haiti aid agencies warn chaotic effort is costing lives

Operations delayed as vital supplies fail to get through at Port-au-Prince airport


International aid agencies have warned that Haitians are dying needlessly amid "utter chaos" in the organisation of relief efforts after last week's devastating ­earthquake. Some have called for the US to take direct control over the rescue ­operation, while others have said the Americans are part of the problem.

A week into the disaster, aid has failed to reach most Haitians amid logistical confusion and disputes over priorities as the population grows ever more desperate.

Médecins sans Frontières says confusion over who is running the relief effort – the US which controls the main airport, or the UN which says it is overseeing distribution – may have led to hundreds of avoidable deaths because it has not been able to get essential supplies in to the country. "The co-ordination ... is not existing or not functioning at this stage," said Benoit Leduc, MSF's operations manager in Port-au-Prince. "I don't really know who is in charge. Between the two systems (the US and the UN) I don't think there is smooth liaison [over] who decides what."

John O'Shea , the head of the Irish medical charity, Goal, echoed the criticism. He said the Haitian earthquake was one of the most difficult disasters his agency had dealt with but at least there were no political obstacles to aid deliveries, as in Burma and Sudan.

"That means there is only one thing stopping a massive and prodigious aid effort being rolled out and that is leadership and co-ordination. You have neither in Haiti at the moment," he said.

"You have the US military doing their thing at the airport. You have the United Nations saying we're in control of food distribution but the United Nations is not taking the pro-active role that they should be taking.

"And you have a Haitian president saying he's in charge and the Americans being politically correct and saying they will work under him. This is all going to lead to a situation of utter chaos. I can't get all my trucks in from the Dominican Republic because I have no guarantee that the people driving them are not going to be macheted to death on the way down. I can't let my doctors and nurses out on the street of Port-au-Prince."

Aid agencies say the US and the UN pay lip service to being under the authority of the Haitian government but President René Préval has little real control.

Préval's role has largely been limited to appealing for assistance and meeting visitors such as the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the UN's secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. He has yet to visit the refugee camps packed with his ­desperate compatriots.

The Haitian prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, told the Washington Post the government was "overwhelmed" by the crisis.

That is widely recognised by aid agencies. O'Shea called on the Americans to take charge of the whole operation.

"Obama has to say: I'm in charge lads. Everybody would row in behind him. Like or lump the Americans, they're people who have the ability to get a job done. Somebody, somewhere has to grab this thing by the balls," he said.

A major US aid agency, which declined to be named for political reasons, said it agreed with O'Shea. "It's quite apparent that the Haitian system can't handle this and I don't think there's a lot of confidence in the UN to provide security. It's clear the Americans are the ones to do this. There are of course political sensitivities but I think we're beyond that at the moment. Look at the reaction of ordinary Haitians. They are welcoming the Americans with open arms," said an official with the agency.

Others were more sceptical, saying the oversight of aid operations belongs with the UN. On Monday, France's cooperation minister, Alain Joyandet, criticised the US by saying that aid efforts were supposed to be about helping Haiti, not "occupying" it.

But there is general agreement that someone needs to take charge.

The US has about 1,000 troops in Haiti and another 2,000 are on their way. There are also 9,000 UN peacekeepers and international police officers in the country.

There has been criticism from some aid agencies of the Americans for giving priority to military flights at the airport while planes carrying relief supplies are unable to land. MSF has had five planes turned back from the airport in recent days, three carrying essential medical supplies and two with expert surgical personnel.

"We lost 48 hours because of these access problems," said Leduc. "Of course it is a small airport, but this is clearly a matter of defining priorities."

Asked how many avoidable deaths had been caused by the delays, he said that hundreds of critical lifesaving operations had been delayed by two days.

"We are talking about septicaemia. The morgues in the hospitals are full," he said.

The World Food Programme said todaythat agreement had been reached that its flights would receive priority landing at Port-au-Prince airport.

Greg Barrow, a WFP spokesman, said the organisation has only been able to distribute with protection from US or UN troops. "We do need security to carry out distributions," he said.

But Barrow said the more immediate obstacle to delivering aid was the logistical difficulty of getting large amounts of food to Haiti because its main airport is small and main port severely damaged. "What we're looking at the moment is opening up as many air, land and sea corridors as possible even to the point of chartering landing vessels and trucks can just drive off on to the beach, a sort of roll-on roll-off mechanism," he said. US officials have made contingency plans to deal with refugees from Haiti although they say there is no sign that a seaborne exodus is imminent.

The homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, appealed to Haitians to remain at home.

"Please: If any Haitians are watching, there may be an impulse to leave the island and to come here," she said. "This is a very dangerous crossing. Lives are lost every time people try to make this crossing. Please do not have us divert our necessary rescue and relief efforts that are going into Haiti by trying to leave at this point."

Thousands of Haitians have fled their country and tens of thousands more have been rescued at sea by the US coast guard over the past 20 years.

Bill Clinton, the former president, visited Haiti today in response to a request from Obama for help in fundraising.