[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 106 (Thursday, August 4, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 4, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                                 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, Mr. Speaker, media accounts this morning in 
the newspapers of the Washington area and the other major cities across 
the country indicated that the President's ``B team'' has met again 
yesterday to talk about the situation in Haiti.
  The media reports indicate that there is considerable disarray among 
the ranks of the President's advisers, and there is considerable 
disagreement in the team effort on what to do about our Haitian policy. 
National Security Adviser Strobe Talbott, according to the media 
accounts, is ready for an early charge into Haiti. The media does not 
indicate in their report whether Mr. Talbott himself wants to be in the 
lead, but he is arguing for an early invasion of Haiti. He called the 
idea of offering inducements to the military regime that is illegally 
there in power, the military junta, he called the idea of trying to 
negotiate and offer them inducements to leave as ``morally repugnant.''
  But Secretary of Defense William Perry wants to do everything 
possible to avoid military conflict, and he countered to the media that 
it is immoral for the United States not to do whatever it can to avoid 
the loss of lives of American soldiers and expenditure of taxpayers' 
money.
  It seems to me those are pretty basic and severe disagreements, and 
it is a shame they are there, because apparently nobody was in the 
room, and there is nobody on the B team that has a better idea than 
either of those two bad ideas. And there are some very good ideas about 
negotiating with the moderates that do not involve bribes to the 
military, and do not involve the invading of Haiti with our military 
might.
  Last night President Clinton held a prime time press conference and 
when asked whether or not he will seek congressional approval now that 
he has gotten the approval from the United Nations, seems a reasonable 
question to ask the President of the United States, he said he would 
welcome the support of the U.S. Congress, but he did not say that he 
was willing to ask for it. If we look closely at the word and the 
followup comments the President made in that press conference, it 
clearly indicates that he has absolutely no intention of asking for 
Congress' views or opinions on the subject of invading Haiti as this 
time.

  I wonder why the President would go to a bunch of foreigners in New 
York at the United Nations and get their approval to use our troops in 
harm's way, and he will not come to the elected representatives of the 
people of the United States, including those people who presumably 
would be in an armed invasion, and ask us what we felt about such an 
invasion? It is a rather curious omission on the President's part.
  When asked if there were any security issues in Haiti that would 
require an invasion, in other words, are the Haitians about to invade 
us, or are our borders about to be overtaken by armed Haitians, or 
unarmed Haitians for that matter, that was not the case, not at all. 
The President merely outlined a domino theory saying there are possible 
ramifications from the seriously bad situation in Haiti which we have 
made in large part because of our embargo or other countries in the 
Central and South American area. What he is basically saying is things 
are really bad in Haiti, and that means it might get bad elsewhere in 
the area, and that is our justification to invade.
  I wonder if we are going to use that criteria for our armed services, 
does that mean we are going to invade the Dominican Republic where 
somebody suggested that the elections were not quite up to standards in 
terms of democratic oversight, or are we going to go anyplace else in 
the world every time we feel that democracy has not been handled in the 
same way that we would handle it in this country, and the only way we 
are going to get their cooperation is to send our military might?
  I think that while we are talking about this and not getting very 
good answers from the White House on any of these points at all, the 
White House has made some commentary about gee, we have a lot of 
friends from Latin America who are really happy that we are going to 
think about invading Haiti. It turns out that is not really true. It 
turns out our allies in the Western Hemisphere, our neighbors and 
friends are not exactly jockeying for a place in the front line to lead 
the charge into Haiti. So far I think we have only Argentina, which is 
perhaps explained by the fact that we have now departed from a rather 
longstanding policy. Members will recall the Falklands war, the 
Malvinas Islands war between Argentina and Great Britain, which is a 
very serious matter for those two countries, and there were a great 
many casualties for those two countries, we have now changed our 
policy. It seems we have not been providing any assistance to Argentina 
and the price for them invading Haiti it seems is to change our policy. 
I wonder if that upsets our friends in Great Britain? Interesting 
point.

                              {time}  1540

  Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Uruguay, and Argentina have today said 
they would much rather meet with that military junta in Haiti than have 
an invasion.
  So it seems our friends are not exactly with us on this idea of an 
invasion. In fact, there are very few people who think it is a good 
idea.

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