Former U.S. Special Envoy to Haiti Daniel Foote scathingly attacked U.S. policy toward that nation, particularly the likelihood there may be a U.S. or foreign intervention, as “insane,” in an Oct. 17 interview with Breaking Point, covered in “The Intercept” Oct. 19. Recall that Foote resigned his position in September of 2021 in protest over the Biden administration’s brutal mass deportation of Haitian migrants who had gathered in Del Rio, Texas.
Haitians who had sought to escape the hell that is daily existence in Haiti were herded like cattle by the United States onto planes and flown back to Port-au-Prince, to a horrific situation Foote called “unlivable.” That policy continues today unabated, never opposed by the de facto Prime Minister Ariel Henry, which is one reason why Foote thinks the U.S. wants him to remain in power so the U.S. can continue its “self-defeating” immigration policy.
The former diplomat explains that while Biden’s deportations were “the straw that broke the camel’s back” for him, ultimately it was the U.S. interventionist policy that forced his hand because he sees U.S. policy moving in that direction. He referred to the fact that the U.S. historically has carried out multiple armed interventions into Haiti, always with the same disastrous results, as an example of what Albert Einstein called “insane … trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Previous interventions may have created temporary stability, Foote said, “but it never lasts, and becomes worse over time.”
