Haiti and the Scruples of George W. Bush

Hector Miranda

The visit of former US President George W. Bush to Haiti is still very talked about in Port au Prince, mainly because of his scruples to deal with black people, as a Youtube-released video showed.

During his stay in Port au Prince, George W. Bush accompanied his peer William Clinton to greet several Haitians, but he couldn’t hide his scruples and wiped his hand in Clinton’s shirt, making him look back astonished.

Bush felt sick, and as he couldn’t find anything to wipe his hand, he did it in Clinton’s sleeve. However, he later said that reality in Haiti had to be witnessed in situ because damages suffered by the country are not shown by television reports.

This is not the first such Bush’s reaction, as in a previous occasion, when he was still the White House incumbent, he shook Barak Obama’s hand and then poured some disinfectant in his hands.

After watching the video, many people wonder why he travelled to Haiti or why he accepted Obama’s proposal to create the Clinton-Bush Foundation with the objective to collect funds for the quake-hit Caribbean country.

And the answer is not so difficult to find: may be for the same reason that thousands of US troops remain deployed here and with no intention to leave, judging from the intensive construction work they are carrying out around bases near the capital Port au Prince.

For some people, Haiti is only a very poor country on the brink of becoming the first desert in the Caribbean, but others, the US government among them, are aware that it boasts enormous oil resources.

Recent studies revealed that Haiti might have much larger hydrocarbon reserves than those of current big producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Venezuela.

The fact is that, in case the 20 large oil and gas fields in Haiti are confirmed, the United States may surely want to be the first to exploit them, and no doubt Bush would not want to get left behind.

Anyway, Haiti seems to be threatened by an enemy that is as dangerous as the quake of January 12. Prensa Latina