He sums up the problem with U.S. foreign policy nicely: "We don't mind our own business!"

Fun fact: U.S. military veterans have given more money to Ron Paul's campaign than all the other campaigns put together.

Alex von Tunzelmann, writing for The Times, explains how Haiti became so indebted in the first place:

The appalling state of the country is a direct result of having offended a quite different celestial authority — the French. France gained the western third of the island of Hispaniola — the territory that is now Haiti — in 1697. It planted sugar and coffee, supported by an unprecedented increase in the importation of African slaves. Economically, the result was a success, but life as a slave was intolerable. Living conditions were squalid, disease was rife, and beatings and abuses were universal. The slaves’ life expectancy was 21 years. After a dramatic slave uprising that shook the western world, and 12 years of war, Haiti finally defeated Napoleon’s forces in 1804 and declared independence. But France demanded reparations: 150m francs, in gold.

For Haiti, this debt did not signify the beginning of freedom, but the end of hope. Even after it was reduced to 60m francs in the 1830s, it was still far more than the war-ravaged country could afford. Haiti was the only country in which the ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their liberty. By 1900, it was spending 80% of its national budget on repayments. In order to manage the original reparations, further loans were taken out — mostly from the United States, Germany and France. 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. In 1947, Haiti finally paid off the original reparations, plus interest. Doing so left it destitute, corrupt, disastrously lacking in investment and politically volatile. Haiti was trapped in a downward spiral, from which it is still impossible to escape. It remains hopelessly in debt to this day.

Wood told the inquiry that some ministers and even the then prime minister, Tony Blair, used to privately claim that the Nato bombing of Kosovo in 1999 provided a useful precedent for going to war in Iraq.

It's one of life's more savage ironies, but one which has become drearily familiar, that your headline "Death toll rises in Afghanistan" (Leader, The Herald, July 11) means British military fatalities. These are given piquancy because they exceed similar losses incurred in Iraq. Thus the headline. As a matter of fact, combined, they approximate the loss of Iraqi civilian lives only last week—repeat, week—in Mosul and Baghdad. But that's how war's rhythms (and its successes and failures) are calibrated. That hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis have died since 2001 hardly raises an eyebrow, far less engendering a headline. But, then, death "over there" was held to be one of the reasons for invasion, and for stopping it "over here", on the streets of Leeds, London or Glasgow. Or so it is said. Thus death over there, excepting ours, is inconsequential in our mindset: even a million deaths by invasion and occupation.