U.S. Policy Towards the Dominican Term Paper

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S. Marines departed, after in effect being an occupying force on foreign soil, they left "a tender wound, making the Dominicans extremely sensitive to any hint of U.S. interference in Dominican affairs and quick 'to resent any slight, any tactlessness' on the part of the U.S. representatives."

To conclude this portion of the paper, the question is pertinent: why was the U.S. so embarrassingly unprepared for the power grab by Trujillo in February, 1930? Roorda explains that the envoy to the Dominican Republic, John Moors Cabot, only 28 years old, misjudged "the distribution of power between the civilian chief of state and the military commander, a mistake repeatedly frequently" by American diplomats, while a nationalism fueled by militarist dictators "swept across the region" in the early 1930s. Meantime, the U.S. backed Trujillo, and even assisted him. It was all part of the American "Good Neighbor" policy: nonintervention, and support for dictators.

And the additional folly of the American "leadership" in the Dominican had an exclamation point added to it (59-60) when investigative reporter Drew Pearson published a series of articles which detailed the brutal repression administered by Trujillo in the first six months of his dictatorship, the State Department was taken "by surprise." In fact, once the State Department woke up to the reality of the bloody, savage style of power that Trujillo wielded, and investigated, they were "shocked to find that the picture is even more lurid than Mr. Pearson points it." Did the U.S. act within "conformity to ideals of right human conduct" in this matter? The answer has to be "no," America did not behave within the "ideals of right human conduct." They sold out to a dictator.

Under the title, "What did the U.S. try to do well, but wound up doing poorly?" was the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) strategy to use the Dominican Republic as a safe haven for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. On page 144, Roorda explains that in the Spring of 1939, the president of Johns Hopkins University (Isaiah Bowman) was sent on a fact-finding mission to the Dominican Republic by FDR to "study the possibility" of Jewish refugees settling in the Dominican.

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Trujillo, who was more interested in getting positive publicity than he was in truly helping Jews flee Hitler's genocidal strategy, albeit he feared "Jews would overrun the country" (145), got a commitment from the U.S. that Roosevelt would deliver a statement "praising Trujillo."

And so, while the initial refugee settlement was a "public relations coup" for Trujillo, a brutal, blood-letting dictator who needed all the positive publicity he could muster, it ended poorly. The news reels about the refugee project (the "amazing human story") "downplayed the Jewish ethnicity of its population," and instead called in a "non-sectarian venture" with people from "Europe's heterogeneous stocks." The fact that the government of FDR would play along with this obvious distortion, speaks volumes about the kind of things the U.S. did not do well.

Worse yet, when Trujillo cut off all visas into his country "except for those [refugees] committed" (145) to the refugee camp area ("Sosua"), FDR's envoy, James Rosenberg, "was instrumental in limiting immigration" to those who were "young" and "strong." The author further explains the utter moral folly of this refugee debacle, by pointing out that "the settlement's rigorous selectivity in some says resembled the discrimination that Jews face in Europe." The bottom line was that the Sosua settlement was, in the author's words, "an anomalous showcase of humanitarianism exhibited to the world against a backdrop of repression." Did the U.S. act within "conformity to ideals of right human conduct" in this matter? The answer has to be "no," the U.S. did not behave in a morally appropriate fashion. And shame on the U.S. For its participation in this sham. Moral Report Card Grade: D+

Reference

Merriam-Webster (2005). "Morality." Accessed on http://www.m-w.com.

Roorda, Eric Paul. (1998). The Dictator Next Door. Durham: Duke University Press......

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