Unless Haiti’s military rulers panic and flee in the face of Bill Clinton’s threats-it would be a first-we will have to invade to get them out. The administration has neatly maneuvered itself into a corner from which there is no other escape. It could, of course, declare its entire Haiti policy misbegotten from day one. It could admit that the restoration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, hardly a vital American interest, is not worth the bones of a single American grenadier. But there is no chance of such an admission.
The invasion will have to go forth. Before it does, before the first American dies, it is worth asking why.
Among the welter of interests offered by Clinton, the only one with any real resonance is refugees. A tidal wave of refugees washing up on Florida shores is something the United States cannot tolerate.
This would be a perfectly reasonable rationale-if the refugee exodus were not the direct consequence of Clinton’s own policies. The refugee flow shows a striking mathematical relationship between Clinton’s ever-changing asylum policies and the numbers of Haitians taking to their boats.
In May, responding to the pressure of Randall Robinson’s hunger strike, Clinton declared a new U.S. policy on Haitian refugees. It offered the possibility of asylum hearings to any Haitian who could make it by boat to a U.S. ship. On June 16, it took effect. Surprise: Within two weeks refugees were arriving at the rate of over 1,000 a day.
On July 5, overwhelmed, Clinton reversed course. Henceforth refugees who took to sea would no longer be considered for asylum in the United States but sent instead to third countries. Surprise: A week later, the number of refugees fell almost 90 percent.
Clearly, these wild fluctuations in refugee flow are not a function of Haiti’s military repression-the repression continues unabated-but of the prospect of admission to the Promised Land. People genuinely in fear of their lives are not terribly fastidious about where they are granted safe haven. Yet large numbers of Haitians-once they realized that they would end up not in Florida but in Grenada or Antigua or even, God forbid, Benin-have apparently decided that Haiti is the better place for them.
Our interest in preventing a flood of refugees is incontrovertible. But the refugee crisis is Clinton’s own creation. It is exacerbated by sanctions that have done nothing but further impoverish the most impoverished nation in the hemisphere. And it is inflamed by an administration that periodically makes the possibility of asylum far easier for Haitians than for, say, Chinese boat people, who when intercepted at sea are almost automatically turned away.
The other reason offered for invading Haiti is that we stand for democracy. Coming from Democrats, this is a touching concern. They spent the better part of the 1980s vilifying the Nicaraguan contras who were trying to restore democracy to their country too. (In the end, they did.) In that case, moreover, all that was being asked was military aid. Today it is American blood.
Moreover, intervening to install Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the name of democracy is quite a stretch. Yes, he was elected president of his country. But many dictators and psychopaths have been elected as well. Juan Peron won election (twice!). So did Hitler.
Aristide is no Hitler but he quite admires Robespierre, who ranks high among history’s bloodthirsty murderers. “I am inclined to see in you a certain resemblance to Robespierre,” he writes in a self-interview in his autobiography.
Accordingly, Aristide incited mobs to intimidate judges and (democratically elected) legislators. He spoke rhapsodically in praise of the “necklace,” the burning tire used to murder political opponents, the modern revolutionary’s improvement of the guillotine: “It is beautiful, it looks sharp. It is fashionable, it smells good,” he, as president, told a crowd in September 1991.
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And then there is the matter of his anti-Americanism. The United States, he writes in the chapter “My Convictions,” is one of the “gang of four” “enemies of Haitian people.” His affection for Che Guevara, his references to American imperialism have been muted of late, for good reason. He now lives in Washington and will ride the backs of Marines into Port-au-Prince. But it is a curious American policy that seeks to advance American interests at the risk of American lives by installing an anti-American demagogue.
American Marines patrolling the streets of Port-au-Prince to keep Robespierre in power-this, after Somalia and Bosnia and Korea, will be Clinton’s great demonstration of muscularity. Makes you pine for flabbiness.