An American soldier marks a young girl's fingernail to indicate that she has
received food aid. (Creative Commons)

Haiti has been caught in a trap since its very early days, part of a
history that casts the United States as both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as
it attempts to help its long-time victim. 

Haiti's misery can be traced back to 1825, when the newly independent
country agreed under duress to pay its former master, France, today's
equivalent of tens of billions of dollars.

This was the restitution that France demanded for what it saw as its
"lost property," actually Haitian slaves. France, the United Kingdom, and
the United States enforced suffocating trade embargoes upon Haiti until it
relented. The country took out high-interest loans to manage the debt,
which it did not fully repay until 122 years later, in 1947.

By then, Haiti was in shambles.

As historian Alex von Tunzelmann wrote in 2009, "Instead of developing
its potential, this deformed state produced a parade of nefarious
leaders, most of whom gave up the insurmountable task of trying to fix
the country and looted it instead. [Paying its debt to France] left it
destitute, corrupt, disastrously lacking in investment and politically
volatile."

It remains that way today, with unemployment at more than 50% and almost no industry whatsoever.

The United States occupied Haiti between 1915 and 1934, which was
wildly unpopular with Haitians and left them with an incompetent
dictator. We meddled in their politics throughout the 20th Century,
working to destabilize the administration of their first democratically
elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and helped rebury them with
strings-attached World Bank and International Monetary Fund debt.

It turns out that aid in the form of loans rarely pays off.

And now, an earthquake has given America cause to send in the Marines
once again. In the short-term, our presence now is a powerful and
valuable one to Haitians in the midst of a crisis. President Obama has
offered our "unwavering support."

But as the recovery effort concludes and Haiti moves toward burying its
dead and rebuilding its capital city, the United States will decide
what kind of long term presence it wants to have.

As Naomi Klein aurgues in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, events like major earthquakes often become
economic boons for first-world enterprise. Just as Blackwater and
Halliburton profited immensely from the destruction wreaked in Iraq,
she warns, American businesses are already looking to make some serious
money rebuilding Haiti.

That capitalist motivation is part of the world we live in. But to look
at the past 200 years in Haiti is to see a country that has always been
exploited by more powerful forces. If our military and our foreign aid
services plan to team up and implement a comprehensive rebuilding plan
that includes a stable economy for Haiti, we'll be doing well by doing
good.

But offering more loans instead of grants, starting shoddy construction
efforts run by second-rate American firms, and continuing to support
bad leadership in Haiti does no good service and makes America into Mr.
Hyde once again.