Proposed: A Marshall Plan for Haiti

When the seismic catastrophe long predicted for the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden strike-slip fault zone finally occurred at 4:53 p.m. on Jan. 12, the earthquake that followed immediately and the devastation that’s still unfolding revealed other fissures, other fault lines that were almost as long and as old as the deforested ground of Haiti.

Courtesy of the 24/7 professional and social media, we’re discovering the powerfully destructive forces that have been at work in the country for decades now, mostly a crushing poverty that’s made Haiti the most impoverished nation in the Western hemisphere — and a relative indifference to that poverty on the part of neighbors big and small, notably the United States.

Now the deal’s gone down. Horribly. Initial casualty estimates of 50,000 people killed by the direct temblor or its numerous aftershocks have exploded; at this writing the Haitian government in extremis has estimated the death toll is, conservatively, at least 200,000 — a tally that would make this seismic event one of the worst in history.



It’s one of those tragically available guesstimates, as likely to be right as wrong. But from what we’ve seen on YouTube and the news (and for many following the events in Port-au-Prince right now, YouTube is the news), the scope of the damage, its Brueghel panorama suggest even that estimate may yet be shockingly conservative.

What lays before the United States and any number of ambitious, visionary world partners is to take this profound crisis and forge something like an opportunity. What’s called for is nothing less than a Marshall Plan for the restoration of Haiti.

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Students of the American statecraft preceding that of Colin Powell know the name of George C. Marshall, for many the best U.S. Secretary of State in the 20th century.

Witnessing the stagnation of Western Europe in the first years after the end of World War II, Marshall undertook the European Recovery Program, a broad and sweeping initiative meant to help the economies of 17 European countries with a variety of forms of material and financial assistance. Simply put, the plan that came to bear his name helped put postwar Europe on its feet.

We tend to remember the Marshall Plan mostly because of its almost surgical efficacy, its direct way of channeling relief to the people who needed it most. We tend to remember the Marshall Plan mostly because of its most dramatic and emotionally powerful manifestation: the Berlin airlift, a British-American campaign during which 2.3 million tons of food were ferried into West Berlin by air over 278,000 flights, in defiance of a Russian blockade of land and water routes to that sector of the city divided by the Allies in 1945.

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That kind of direct intervention seems to have become a thing of the past, if there’s no direct provocation for its use. This is the time and place to bring it back. A Marshall-style plan for the recovery of Haiti and its people is precisely the kind of global forward thinking needed today for several reasons.



First, it helps to solidify the cultural and social affinities that already exist between Haiti and the United States. There are more than 2 million Haitian Americans, and longstanding ties of music, style and cuisine make this country a natural partner in reconstruction.

It also gives the United States the opportunity for a necessary nation building in its own backyard. There’s already been a long-established network of NGOs, charities and other grassroots organizations working there for decades. Those groups form the informational infrastructure needed by the United States and its partners to begin the process of building Haitian economic self-sufficiency.

And a concerted effort to help the Haitians help themselves fills the current vacuum: a nation whose police force is scattered, if not dead; whose government is greviously damaged; whose president was left literally homeless by the events of Tuesday afternoon. A country with no functioning government soon discovers any number of bad actors and militant freelancers more than willing to fill that role. With two wars going on on the other side of the planet, at a rough cost of $370 million a day, that’s a vacuum at our doorstep we don’t need.

Job #1: Saving Haiti

In an instant, the world changed on Tuesday.



That afternoon a cataclysm was visited on the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, a disaster whose scope is undefined, and will be for months or years to come.



What's obviously a gut-check time for the United States (as the only global power that can take the lead in rescuing Haiti, its neighbor just 600 miles away) is also a time for the individual to step up to the plate, sit down at the computer and send the assistance relief agencies need now: MONEY. NOW.

Drop some coin on CARE.

Send those twos and fews to the International Rescue Committee.

A little cheddar, please, to Oxfam. And Doctors Without Borders, while you're at it. And don't get suckered by telephone solicitations; the scam artists are already out in force. Go straight to the sites themselves to be sure your money goes straight where it needs to go.



Doesn't matter what your political or racial or religious persuasion is. This transcends all of that shit. This is nothing less than a time that confirms our primal capacity for empathy, for a recognition of the truly global impact of this event, and what our recognition of that fact, or our failure to recognize it, says about us as human beings.

The people of Haiti need change they can believe in. Our small change can make a big difference.

MONEY. Ora. Ahora. الآن Maintenant. Jetzt. עכשיו اوس 今

NOW.