[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 90 (Wednesday, July 13, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 13, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       THE FAILED POLICY IN HAITI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, the subject of Haiti and our policy in Haiti 
has certainly captured the attention of the Nation these days. I wanted 
to sum up just exactly what the facts are again, because there seems to 
be an increasing dialogue and debate in the media and on the electronic 
TV.
  There are failures in the Clinton policy. These are factual matters. 
These are not debatable, they are facts. Think of this: Under the 
Clinton policy, we have unleashed a monumental refugee crisis. That is 
a fact. It cannot be denied. It was not there until we had the Clinton 
policy.
  The second thing that has happened, which is uncontroverted, I 
believe, is that we have driven up the misery index for Haitians, 
mostly poor Haitians and middle-class Haitians trying to get along in 
Haiti.
  At the same time, we have made life fairly easy, or at least 
relatively easy, for the very people that we are targeting our 
sanctions against: that is, those military people who illegally took 
over the country. They are thriving, and the people we are trying to 
help are being subjected to additional misery virtually every day. That 
misery is real. It is starvation, it is lack of medical attention that 
is causing disease to thrive, and it is an extraordinary, deplorable 
condition.
  When we start eating our seed corn, literally, and cutting down our 
fruit trees to build boats to escape, and are no longer going to have 
fruit, we have a problem on our hands. That is what our policy is 
causing.
  Equally true, it is not debatable that the Clinton policy is causing 
a political situation in Haiti that has always been difficult to 
polarize. The people who do not like each other really detest each 
other now, because we have created so much pressure there that there is 
no chance they will talk to each other and come to a common accord and 
make peace.
  We have polarized people who do not like each other to the point 
where they are ready to do bad things to each other again. We have also 
certainly created a loss of credibility for our capabilities as a world 
power.
  We have had a policy of zigging and zagging and changing our minds 
and inconsistency, applying now one way and then the next. We have got 
our friends and neighbors in the Caribbean wondering what in the world 
we are trying to do, and why we are putting the pressure on them to do 
things that do not need to be done, that they do not want to do, like 
take hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of any numbers of 
Haitian exiles into their countries where jobs are just as precious as 
they are in any other country, including ours, especially when we do 
not need to be having all these Haitians leaving Haiti. There is a 
better solution.
  Finally, we need to talk about another incontrovertible fact, Mr. 
Speaker. It is one that I do not have the numbers on because nobody 
seems to be willing to come forward with it. This is costing the 
American taxpayers a bundle, but nobody knows just how much a bundle. 
It is a big bundle.
  We have 15 Coast Guard cutters down there, we have 8 Navy ships, we 
have 5 attack assault amphibious ships down there with our best 
fighting forces aboard. All of this is going on at some very great 
expense.
  Of course, we have the refugee processing centers, the ships that we 
have rented; we have the Comfort, the hospital ship we are using as a 
processing center, and whatever deals we have made with neighboring 
countries to rent land or rent processing stations in the area. It is 
expensive.
  Mr. Speaker, I think what else is happening, which is really critical 
and catching everybody's attention here, is that we are beginning to 
box ourselves into a dangerous and foolhardy position where we may not 
have a good out if we do not retreat from where we are, except a 
military invasion, and that would be a fateful, serious mistake. It has 
not worked before and it will not work this time.
  Yes, we will win the military engagement, but we will end up losing 
credibility and we will end up taking on problems that we are not 
prepared to take on, that we have no ways to resolve. It will not be 
doing the Haitians a favor and it will not be doing the United States 
of America a favor.
  Mr. Speaker, I might say that all of these things are going on under 
the Clinton policy. Are there elements of a successful policy we could 
adopt instead? Indeed there are. If we take the pressure off and pull 
back from the invasion, if we lift the sanctions and we remove those 
magnets that are drawing the refugees out of Haiti, we begin to make 
life a little bit more sane in Haiti for those people.
  Can we do that? Yes. Lifting the sanctions will indeed allow our 
humanitarian relief flights to go back in. We have had flights that 
have not flown for a month now, that used to go in twice a week to 
provide food, medicine, and other supplies for the needy and the poor 
in Haiti. We just got one flight out, I am told. We have to go through 
a tremendous amount of red-tape to get these flights in that used to go 
routinely a couple of times a week. This is insane. Why don't we send 
those flights back with this relief that these people need?
  We can certainly set up a safe haven in Haiti on an appropriate 
geographical site where we can provide this humanitarian relief, where 
we can do it safely, and where we can create the opportunity for the 
return of the duly elected president, who, frankly, should be picking 
up his paycheck in Haiti, on Haitian soil, doing his job, rather than 
in the United States of America, in Washington, DC, living in a 
Georgetown penthouse.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the final point as I close out is to say that we 
have an opportunity to deal with real people who want to bring peace to 
Haiti, the elected people in the parliament. They want to talk to us, 
they want parliamentary exchange. We should be doing that instead of 
talking war.

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