Padgett: Florida needs to stop the flow of weapons causing havoc in Haiti | Opinion

If President Biden won’t commit U.S. troops to rein in the gangster violence destroying Haiti, maybe Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis should step up and send in his military — especially since the Gunshine State is the chief source of the firearms terrorizing Haitians.

It’s great to see DeSantis has found his martial mojo again after the Trump-spanking he took in the Republican presidential primary. Floridians are all behind his order this week to send 140 state troopers around the peninsula to interdict criminal spring breakers.

But, frankly, chasing down inebriated Delta House brothers from Wisconsin seems like small fry. DeSantis, after all, has created an expensive civilian military force, the Florida State Guard, to confront what he calls the national security threats resulting from Biden policy failures like immigration. It’s why he recently deployed his Florida guard to Texas to help “stop the invasion at the southern border.”

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Now DeSantis could turn his militia’s sights to a nobler mission: Haiti, which this week is staring into the failed-state abyss after the gangs that control much of its territory staged a bloody offensive that shut down the country and left it teetering on the brink of criminal governance.

First, it gives DeSantis the opportunity to politically grandstand another Biden failure, since critics say Haiti’s meltdown is one of the administration’s biggest foreign policy shambles.

Second, it offers Florida a chance to atone for its role as an unscrupulous gun show vendor arming the gangs that have kidnapped, hijacked and murdered their way to power in Haiti. Hoodlums whose chokehold is so terrifying they may now force interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign. As of Wednesday night, Henry still couldn’t return to the country because the military rifle-toting terrorists had shut down the airports.

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Report after report by groups like the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime cites Florida as the gangs’ go-to gun-trafficking source. The state’s notoriously lax gun laws make it a candy store for smugglers shipping high-power weapons to Haiti, like the 17 semi-automatic rifles ferried to the monstrous 400 Mawozo group in a bizarre case I reported on last year.

So if, at this point, somebody’s got to storm the beaches to dislodge gang rule in Haiti, shouldn’t it be Florida’s Marines? Doesn’t the Gunshine State bear  responsibility for putting out the firearms conflagration it helped fuel in an impoverished country that doesn’t even manufacture guns?

And think of the political payoff for 2028, Governor. Instead of bullying desperate Latin American migrants, which didn’t get you all that far in this year’s presidential bid, this time you could reap credit for bringing down actual villains. Like Haiti’s gang coalition leader, former cop Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier. Or better yet, former police commander and ex-convict Guy Philippe, who just might fill the country’s power vacuum if Henry bows out.

I met Philippe 20 years ago, when he and a thug army led a putsch against then Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, himself an unhinged despot-in-the-making. I sat on a hotel balcony with Philippe in Haiti’s coastal city of Cap Haïtien as he prepared to descend on Port-au-Prince — and I listened to him ludicrously insist for hours that he was a French Enlightenment-inspired democrat instead of a Colombian cartel-employed coup-monger.

Philippe was unmistakably the latter, which is why he later spent six years in U.S. prison for drug-trafficking. But after his release last fall, he returned to Haiti and quickly huckstered himself into leading a political opposition movement. He’s now vying to be the gang-supported “transitional” head of state as Henry’s hollow caretaker government collapses.

Why mess around with undocumented immigrants and high schoolers flashing fake IDs, Gov. DeSantis, when you and your military could score glory for the Free State of Florida by going Navy Seals on a creep like Philippe?

I’m of course not seriously suggesting a Florida State Guard invasion of Haiti. And I of course know that even if that operation were feasible, it would never happen — because Florida, like the rest of America, really doesn't care about Haiti.

Just as it really doesn't care about all those Florida guns in Haiti.

Tim Padgett is the Americas Editor for WLRN, covering Latin America, the Caribbean and their key relationship with South Florida.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Governor DeSantis needs to act against weapons flowing to Haiti