[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]


                              {time}  2010
 
         THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO GO TO WAR IN HAITI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. (Mr. Holden). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Duncan] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I also rise to discuss the situation in 
Haiti.
  The American people, or at least an overwhelming majority of the 
American people, do not want to go to war in Haiti. There is no threat 
to our national security there. There is no vital U.S. interest there.
  Some in the administration are saying that we have an interest in 
invading Haiti to slow the flood of immigration. However, as the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Torricelli] was quoted as saying in the 
Wall Street Journal, ``A situation is being created where the 
administration is leaving itself no choice but military intervention.''
  In other words, it is the policy of this administration itself, that 
is, the embargo, the sanctions which are creating the ``need'' for 
military action. We are manufacturing this crisis ourselves. Senator 
Graham of the other body from Florida said a few days ago the U.S. 
embargo is doing nothing to the rich people of Haiti, but it is 
starving the poor people there to death.
  This was reconfirmed on the Nightline program last night. Our 
policies are having no effect on the rich, but we are forcing the poor 
from Haiti to come here.
  If we invade Haiti, what have we proved? Nothing. Let us say we 
conquer Haiti in a few hours or a few days militarily. So what: Big 
deal.
  But all the experts say we would have to stay there a long time to 
really stabilize the country. This would be a tremendous drain on our 
national finances at a time that we really cannot afford it. All this 
to satisfy domestic political considerations or to give the President 
some type of foreign policy victory. It is not worth it. It is not 
worth the life of one American soldier.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DUNCAN. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I think it is also important to remember the President was going to 
send marines into Haiti originally with sidearms only.
  Mr. DUNCAN. I thank the gentleman for his comments.
  One of our leading national columnists wrote this in yesterday's 
Washington Times:

                           (By Pat Buchanan)

       God willing, the saving grace of America's ruthless and 
     ruinous policy toward the tiny and destitute nation of Haiti 
     will be that it tarnishes forever the reputations of those 
     who pursued it. For what we have done to Haiti for three 
     years, would, in better times, have been called ``a crime 
     against humanity.''
       ``I think the sanctions are having an impact,'' President 
     Clinton said cheerily in Latvia. He certainly has that right.
       Haiti's strangulation is almost complete now. Her economy 
     is destroyed; her population is without work; her people are 
     dying of disease; many of her babies are being born retarded 
     because their mothers are malnourished; and perhaps thousands 
     have drowned trying to escape the hell on Earth our embargo-
     blockade has made of their country.
       Why did the United States do such a thing?
       Three years ago Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a priest defrocked 
     by the Catholic Church for preaching class hatred, a man the 
     CIA has concluded is a nut case, was ousted by the general he 
     had made chief of staff. Gen. Raoul Cedras booted out Mr. 
     Aristide because Mr. Aristide, though elected democratically, 
     had begun ruling dictatorially.
       Surely Haiti would have been better off for the ouster of 
     Mr. Aristide, if only we had left her alone. But rather than 
     accept the military coup, and suggest to Mr. Aristide he take 
     up a new trade, the United States decided that Haiti's 
     internal affairs were our concern. But this time it was the 
     Left that was adamant that Mr. Aristide be returned to his 
     palace, even if we had to choke his country to death to 
     achieve it.
       Consider the hypocrisy here.
       In 1933 under Franklin Roosevelt the United States signed a 
     convention in Montevideo stipulating that ``No [American] 
     State has the right to intervene in the internal affairs of 
     another.'' This was the Good Neighbor policy, celebrated by 
     the American Left as replacing Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick 
     policy so beloved of Yankee capitalists with large 
     investments in little countries in the Caribbean and Central 
     America.
       Yet, today, it is the 1980's ``Hands off Nicaragua!'' crowd 
     howling for intervention in Haiti, and a liberal Democrat who 
     shakes his fist and sends the gunboats loaded with Marines.
       Out of the blindness of ideology and the arrogance of power 
     we have ravaged the poorest nation in our neighborhood, to 
     force them to take back a Castroite demagogue we would never 
     have tolerated in our own country.
       Mr. Aristide is not worth the life of a single U.S. Marine. 
     And if U.S. lives are lost putting him back in power, or a 
     civil war erupts in Haiti that we are forced to put down, or 
     a long and costly occupation has to be undertaken, full 
     responsibility will rest with the Clinton administration.
  Mr. Speaker, I say once again, an overwhelming majority, three-
fourths, of the American people, by most polls, do not want us to go to 
war in Haiti. We should not do this just to give Mr. Clinton some 
points in some political popularity poll.
  I urge my colleagues to say ``no'' to military intervention in Haiti.

                          ____________________