[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 132 (Tuesday, September 20, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
   QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED REGARDING AMERICA'S POLICY TOWARDS HAITI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, George Santayana said, paraphrasing Euripedes 
and Thucydides, that ``Those who fail to remember history are condemned 
to repeat it.'' It is a lesson which apparently is tougher to learn 
than has been thought.
  In 1915 the United States Marines invaded Haiti. We had two 
fundamental justifications for doing that. One was humanitarian 
purposes. The other was to uphold the Monroe Doctrine, Monroe Doctrine. 
Doesn't that sound eerily familiar? Doesn't that have a weird kind of 
ring today?
  The fact is, Mr. Speaker, we have to ask ourselves what good did we 
do. We finally got out in 1934, 19 years later. To see how successful 
we were in establishing those democratic institutions and to eliminate 
human rights abuse, we look at Haiti today, and what kind of a record 
do we see? It is a very sad record, obviously, or we would not be 
there. It is a troubled place.
  Mr. Speaker, what have we gained? I would like to read something from 
the Haiti agreement that was entered into on September 18, 1994. No. 2, 
it says ``To implement this agreement, the Haitian military and the 
police forces will work in close cooperation with the U.S. Military 
Mission. The cooperation, conducted with mutual respect, will last 
during a transitional period required for insuring vital institutions 
of the country.''
  Let me repeat that one part. It says implementing this agreement, the 
Haitian military and police forces will work in close cooperation with 
the United States military mission, and that cooperation will be 
conducted with mutual respect, mutual respect. We are now going to have 
mutual respect for the same man and the same police force that was 
described by the President Thursday night as conducting a campaign of 
rape, torture, and mutilation, a reign of terror.
  General Cedras, the man responsible for ``people slain and mutilated 
with body parts left as warnings to terrify others, children forced to 
watch as their mothers' faces are slashed with machetes,'' these are 
the same people that we are now, according to the Haitian agreement, 
going to rule in cooperation with, close cooperation, over the next 30 
days as a minimum, and it will be conducted with mutual respect.
  Lt. Gen. Henry Shelton, after meeting with General Cedras at military 
headquarters, spoke very warmly of him, according to the reports from 
the wire reports this morning. He spoke very warmly of Cedras, and said 
that the Haitian military chief would play an important role in many of 
the decisions made in the days ahead. This is the same Cedras who was 
described in the President's recent address in which he used the word 
``rape'' 3 times, the words ``the killing of children'' 3 times, and he 
was described as a dictator or as a tyrant fully 18 times. This is 
where this policy has now gotten us to.
  Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of questions that need to be asked and 
there are a lot of questions that need to be answered.
  First of all, how is it possible that the President of the United 
States thinks that it is more important to get the approval of the 
United Nations than to receive the approval of the U.S. Congress and 
the people of the United States? Have we not learned any lessons from 
Vietnam?
  Have we not learned any lessons whatsoever with respect to foreign 
policy; that, No. 1, if we are going to engage in a tenuously popular 
war to begin with, that we get the approval of the American people, 
that we seek that and receive it; that we get the approval of the U.S. 
Congress? Clearly not.
  Most importantly, Mr. Speaker, what was the justification? Not 
security. Is this a staging area for Communist insurgency in Latin 
America? I think not. Nobody is suggesting that. Is this a staging area 
for drugs that come into the United States? No, nobody is suggesting 
that.
  What is it exactly that we are doing there? What is the justification 
for placing any, any American lives at risk in going into Haiti?
  Mr. Speaker, as we have seen this morning, there has been a rather 
unanimous outcry from the Nation's editorial pages that question the 
outcome and--not questions the outcome, but in fact question the policy 
in the first place. The New York Times leads with ``Haiti: Relief, Not 
Victory.'' David Broader writes in his column ``Hostage to Haiti,'' 
describing the President: ``. . . he is like a kid who jumps from a 7th 
story window ledge into a fireman's net. After you know he's not 
cracked his skull, you have to ask, `What the hell was he doing on the 
ledge?'''
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record some of these editorials.
  The material referred to is as follows:

                            Haiti-Agreement

       White House text of the agreement reached in Port-au-
     Prince, Haiti, Sept, 18, 1994, that averted an invasion of 
     Haiti.
       1. The purpose of this agreement is to foster peace in 
     Haiti, to avoid violence and bloodshed, to promote freedom 
     and democracy, and to forge a sustained and mutually 
     beneficial relationship between the governments, people and 
     institutions of Haiti and the United States.
       2. To implement this agreement, the Haitian military and 
     police forces will work in close cooperation with the U.S. 
     Military Mission. This cooperation, conducted with mutual 
     respect, will last during the transitional period required 
     for insuring vital institutions of the country.
       3. In order to personally contribute to the success of this 
     agreement, certain military officers of the Haitian armed 
     forces are willing to consent to an early honorable 
     retirement in accordance with U.N. Resolutions 917 and 940 
     when a general amnesty will be voted into law by the Haitian 
     Parliament, or October 15, 1994, whichever is earlier. The 
     parties to this agreement pledge to work with the Haitian 
     Parliament to expedite this action. Their successors will be 
     named according to the Haitian Constitution and existing 
     military law.
       4. The military activities of the U.S. Military Mission 
     will be coordinated with the Haitian military high command.
       5. The economic embargo and the economic sanctions will be 
     lifted without delay in accordance with relevant U.N. 
     Resolutions and the need of the Haitian people will be met as 
     quickly as possible.
       6. The forthcoming legislative elections will be held in a 
     free and democratic manner.
       7. It is understood that the above agreement is conditioned 
     on the approval of the civilian governments of the United 
     States and Haiti.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Sept 20, 1994]

                        Our Partner, Gen. Cedras

                        (By Charles Krauthammer)

       The folly of a Haitian invasion having been averted--ours 
     is a ``semipermissive entry''--the burdens of a thankless 
     Haitian occupation are just beginning. Amid the back-slapping 
     and self-congratulation about the Carter mission's apparent 
     success, the main point is easy to overlook: We are back in 
     Somalia, this time with a Caribbean address.
       As the administration admits, the main problem with 
     invasion is not the invasion itself but the occupation it 
     ushers in. What Carter did, explained Defense Secretary 
     William Perry, was allow us to skip step 1. But it is step 2 
     that we will rue.
       As in Somalia, we are entering a highly disorganized and 
     extremely violent country. Once again we are occupying a 
     people deeply divided--Somalia by clan; Haiti, no less 
     fatally, by class. Again, we are entering relatively 
     unopposed. Indeed, the greatest danger to the troops first 
     arriving by helicopter in Port-au-Prince, as to the Marines 
     landing in Mogadishu, was the stampeding camera crews.
       But the Haiti adventure is more problematic than Somalia. 
     In Somalia, our initial mission was narrowly defined and 
     quite simple: Feed the hungry. The operation went wrong only 
     many months later than when we strayed into politics and 
     assigned ourselves the task of nation-building.
       In Haiti our mission from the start of the occupation is 
     politics. There is no need to feed the Haitians. They will be 
     able to feed themselves once our starvation-inducing embargo 
     is lifted. We are, instead, to ``restore'' democracy to a 
     country that has never had it, build a civilian-controlled 
     military where it has never existed and create a secure 
     environment for the peaceful transition of power among 
     murderous rivals.
       This is nation-building par excellence. Whether during the 
     months of naked U.S. occupation that are now beginning or 
     during the months of semi-U.S. occupation--the so-called U.N. 
     peace-keep phase--to follow, we are now as responsible for 
     Haiti as we were for Somalia. Except that our agenda in Haiti 
     is from Day 1 far more ambitious.
       That agenda is now all the harder to fulfill because of the 
     concessions Clinton agreed to at the eleventh hour to avoid 
     having to go through with the invasion. Cedras may have 
     blinked, but Clinton did too. Loath to pull the trigger, he 
     allowed Cedras and his military to remain in Haiti and 
     intact.
       Cedras will not be required to go into exile, merely to 
     retire honorably. It is something that is not understood by 
     most people,'' explained Carter. ``It's a serious violation 
     of inherent human rights for a citizen to be forced into 
     exile.'' Who but Carter could have said something like that? 
     It is one thing to say of a dirty deal ``we had to do it,'' 
     quite another to defend it out of lofty concern for the human 
     rights of a man who, by Clinton's own description, deserves 
     to be drawn and quartered, let alone exiled.
       Cedras's army comes out quite well, too. It is granted not 
     just a broad amnesty more firmly guaranteed than under the 
     Governors Island deal that Cedras made and broke last year. 
     It has also been granted a month's worth of time--and the 
     priceless legitimacy that goes with its coordinating the 
     American entry--before it has to turn over power.
       Aristide having been induced to step down next year, a 
     power vacuum looms. Cedras and his amnestied associates--last 
     week Clinton had called them ``thugs,'' but this is this 
     week--are now as well positioned to inherit power when the 
     Americans tire of international police duty, as is Mohamed 
     Farah Aideed--last year's thug--in Somalia.
       And why are we going in to police Haiti in the first place? 
     Wasn't it because, as President Clinton insisted only last 
     Thursday, Gen. Cedras was the worst human rights violator in 
     the hemisphere, the man who launched a ``campaign of rape, 
     torture and mutilation . . . a reign of terror,'' the man 
     responsible for ``people slain and mutilated with body parts 
     left as warnings to terrify others; children forced to watch 
     as their mothers' faces are slashed with machetes''? 
     (Clinton, by the way, is the man who in 1992 accused George 
     Bush of personalizing our fight with Iraq.)
       Four days later, Gen. Cedras is our partner in the 
     governance of Haiti. For one month we shall be ruling Haiti 
     together with a man, Clinton assured us last week, given to 
     ``executing children, raping women, killing priests.''
       One renaissance weekend with Jimmy Carter, and the man has 
     metamorphosed. Colin Powell tells us of Cedras's sense of 
     honor. Carter is impressed with Cedras's desire to do the 
     right thing for his country. Why are we risking the lives of 
     15,000 Americans to rid Haiti of a man of such elevated 
     motives?
       And Clinton complains that Americans are growing cynical 
     about their government.
                                  ____


               [From the New York Times, Sept. 20, 1994]

                       Haiti: Relief, Not Victory

       The negotiated end--or intermission--in the Haiti crisis 
     lifted the nation's mood for a simple reason. Few things are 
     more dreadful than the death of American troops in military 
     actions that are both unpopular and unnecessary to the 
     nation's security. So it was a welcome sight to see U.S. 
     forces enter Port-au-Prince by agreement, rather than 
     invasion.
       But the White House should be celebrating its luck, not 
     spinning the public about its diplomatic skill and the 
     virtues of Presidential resolve. President Clinton had 
     reduced himself to the most dismal of foreign policy options: 
     attack or lose face.
       That happened because Mr. Clinton ordered an invasion fleet 
     to sea when two-thirds of the American people and a majority 
     of Congress were opposed to fighting over who governs Haiti. 
     Even the sachems of his own party, like Bob Strauss, warned 
     that the trumped-up invasion could turn into a political 
     disaster.
       Mr. Clinton was released from his self-built policy prison 
     by adopting Senator Bob Dole's useful suggestion to send 
     intermediaries. He sensibly chose former President Jimmy 
     Carter, former Gen. Colin Powell and Senator Sam Nunn. The 
     team performed with skill and dignity in altering the 
     unalterable formula defined in Mr. Clinton's last speech. The 
     generals are not leaving immediately. They may never leave. 
     Mr. Aristide is not going back speedily, but by and by.
       The lessons of this episode should not be washed away in a 
     deluge of relief.
       The Administration's attempt to inflate Mr. Aristide's fate 
     into a casus belli has not only been messy in execution. It 
     has also been dangerous to the country and poorly conceived. 
     Mr. Aristide represents Haiti's lawful Government, but there 
     has never been a convincing case for the U.S. restoring him 
     to office by military force. Public and Congressional support 
     should always be a prerequisite for non-emergency military 
     action. It should be so especially when novel doctrines of 
     intervention and United Nations peacekeeping are involved.
       The military regime and its civilian puppets will remain in 
     place for now, though with a large armed U.S. force peering 
     over their shoulders. The anti-Aristide leaders who defied 
     last year's Governors Island agreements have been given 
     another chance to make mischief, for example by preventing 
     Parliament from passing the amnesty law that is supposed to 
     initiate the transfer of power. The amnesty itself represents 
     a serious dilution of moral and legal accountability, further 
     complicating the problem of building a democratic culture in 
     a country deformed by dictators.
       The soldiers on the island and policy makers in Washington 
     must contend with the fact that Mr. Aristide is in a weak 
     position. Because the final agreement was brokered under 
     direct threat of U.S. invasion, Mr. Aristide was reduced to 
     the uncomfortable role of an informed but passive 
     participant. This casts a shadow of peril over the days 
     ahead, when Mr. Aristide must establish his independent 
     authority. Letting Generals Raoul Cedras and Philippe Biamby 
     stay on may prevent bloodletting among the murderers and 
     torturers they once led. But it also keeps troublesome and 
     defiant figures on the scene and, perhaps, beyond the reach 
     of law.
       American troops will do well to prevent this stew from 
     boiling over. They cannot bring democracy to Haiti. Only the 
     Haitian people can. That is why foreign military force was 
     never an appropriate answer to Haiti's crisis.
       But foreign military force is now moving in, starting with 
     15,000 mainly U.S. troops. After an indefinite transition 
     period, they will yield to a multinational force of 6,000, 
     about a third of them from the U.S. Even with no invasion, 
     Mr. Clinton is still deliberately placing U.S. forces in 
     harm's way. He should seek Congressional approval now.
       With U.S. troops and prestige now on the line and Haitian 
     democracy at issue, Americans want this venture to go well. 
     They will try to find reason to cheer Mr. Clinton. In return, 
     they have every reason to insist that the President will 
     ponder the difference between luck and wisdom.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 20, 1994]

                            Hostage to Haiti

                          (By David S. Broder)

       President Clinton now has put a 15,000-man American 
     occupation force into Haiti and, by doing so, has made his 
     presidency hostage to the uncertain fate of a badly divided, 
     backward country that no one could have imagined was a vital 
     interest of the United States.
       The early euphoria over the success of Jimmy Carter's 
     negotiating team in eliminating the threat of organized armed 
     resistance is understandable. But it must be tempered by the 
     realization that--as the Clinton administration candidly 
     conceded in the days preceding the scheduled Sunday 
     invasion--the real danger is that U.S. troops may be caught 
     in an ongoing civil war between heavily armed gangs bent on 
     revenge or determined not to yield power. Then--in a nation 
     that has good reason to resent past American imperialism--
     they must prop up a president whose own commitment to 
     democracy is unproven and provide the resources to rebuild a 
     shattered economy and a virtually nonexistent civil society.
       The moral high ground that Clinton claimed for his action 
     has eroded. The military men he called ``dictators'' and 
     ``thugs'' will remain in office for the next month and have 
     become our de facto partners in this phase of the American 
     occupation. The first ``achievement'' of the U.S. 
     intervention is to guarantee blanket amnesty for Gen. Raoul 
     Cedras and his followers, who may remain in the country to 
     organize opposition to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
       After making so many threats that he could not back down, 
     Clinton sent in the troops in order to protect his own 
     credibility and that of the nation. Credibility is important, 
     and by sticking to his guns in the face of strong domestic 
     opposition, Clinton has shown his tenacity.
       But he is like a kid who jumps from a 7th story window 
     ledge into a fireman's net. After you know he's not cracked 
     his skull, you have to ask, ``What the hell was he doing on 
     the ledge?''
       The intervention defies almost every rule of political 
     prudence that we thought our government had learned from the 
     painful experience of the post-World War II world.
       The lesson of Vietnam is that you don't commit troops until 
     the country is committed to the mission. Even now, there is 
     no evidence the public has endorsed the commitment in Haiti.
       A second rule is that if the commitment is likely to be 
     lengthy, expensive and substantial, Congress better be in on 
     the takeoff, and not just the landing. Amazingly, Clinton 
     went to the United Nations for approval of military action 
     inside our Western Hemisphere ``sphere of influence,'' but 
     evaded Congress--because he knew support was lacking.
       When an American military occupation of Haiti was first 
     suggested, why didn't Clinton throw its advocate out of the 
     Oval Office?
       I put that question last week to a prominent Democrat who 
     has dealt with national security issues at high levels since 
     Vietnam War days and who has had a close-hand view of 
     Clinton's decision-making in this area. What he said was 
     disturbing, but I find no reason to disagree with the four 
     key points of his analysis.
       First, he said, remember the campaign. Clinton's main focus 
     was on the economy and domestic issues, so he did not want to 
     debate national security policy in any broad context with 
     President Bush. His advisers suggested he could put his 
     opponent on the defensive--and show a toughness that his 
     personal history did not suggest--by vowing to take a hard 
     line against the Serb aggressors in Bosnia and the generals 
     who had ousted President Aristide in Haiti. The stance worked 
     fine as a campaign tactic, but caused endless headaches once 
     he was in the White House.
       The second factor is that for Clinton, as my friend said, 
     paraphrasing Clausewitz, ``foreign policy is domestic policy, 
     conducted by other means.'' Clinton has built his domestic 
     program on the core Democratic base, which is the political 
     left. Human rights issues in general--and the worker-priest 
     movement of Latin America, which spawned Father Aristide--are 
     important to liberals. Haiti has particular salience or the 
     Congressional Black Caucus and for African American voters, 
     the most loyal of Clinton's constituencies. Their agenda 
     became his agenda.
       The third point, my friend said, is that Clinton ``would 
     rather be sympathetic than cold-hearted.'' He empathizes with 
     people's feelings, and when political allies said they 
     thought Aristide deserved to fill the office to which he had 
     been elected, Clinton's response was not to say, ``Maybe, but 
     I've got bigger fish to fry.''
       The fourth point, closely linked to the third, is that the 
     president and his national security advisers are singularly 
     lacking in any long-term policy perspective. Each step of 
     Haitian policy--from the initial offer of an American haven 
     for refugees to the fateful decision to go beyond economic 
     sanctions to the threat of force--was taken as if it would 
     somehow resolve the problem by itself. No one in the inner 
     circle was forceful enough to ask, ``Are we prepared to act 
     on this threat if our bluff is called?''
       It was called, and now Clinton has followed the idealistic 
     President Woodrow Wilson in sending American forces to Haiti. 
     The last such occupation lasted 19 years.
                                  ____


             [From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 20, 1994]

                     A Soldier of The Not Great War

                           (By Mark Helprin)

       Mr. President, Haiti is on an island, and its navy, which 
     was built mainly in Arkansas, is well characterized by the 
     International Institute for Strategic Studies as ``Boats 
     only.'' The Haitian gross national product is little more 
     than half of what Americans spend each year on greeting 
     cards, its defense forces outnumbered five to one by the 
     corps of lawyers in the District of Columbia.
       With other than a leading role in world military affairs, 
     the Haitian army has retreated into a kind of relaxed 
     confusion in which it is also the first department, captains 
     can outrank colonels, and virtually no one has ever seen 
     combat. Which raises the question, why has the leading 
     superpower placed Haiti at the center of its political 
     universe?
       Mr. President, in trumpeting this gnatfest at a hundred 
     times the volume of the Normandy Invasion you have invited 
     challenges from all who would take comfort at the spectacle 
     of the U.S. in full fluster over an object so diminutive as 
     to be a source of wonder.
       Anyone considering a serious challenge to the U.S. has been 
     reassured that we have no perspective in international 
     affairs, that we act not in regard to our basic interests but 
     in reaction to sentiment and ideology, that we can be 
     distracted by the smallest matter and paralyzed by the 
     contemplation of force, that we have become timid, weak, and 
     slow. This is what happens when the leaders of the world's 
     most powerful nation take a year to agonize over Haiti. This 
     is what happens when the elephant ignores the jackals and 
     gravely battles a fly.


                             why not cuba?

       Given that Haiti is a nation doomed to perpetual 
     harmlessness, that it is not allied to any great power, that 
     it does not export an ideology, that it does not have an 
     ideology, and that it is of no economic consequence to any 
     nation except perhaps the Dominican Republic, you strained to 
     justify intervention the way a prisoner with his hand 
     stretched through the bars strains for a key just out of his 
     reach.
       In your recent address you mentioned rape three times, the 
     killing of children three times, and the words ``dictator'' 
     or ``tyrant'' 18 times. If we must act ``when brutality 
     occurs close to our shores,'' why not now invade Cuba, or 
     Colombia, or the South Bronx, or Anacostia? Every year in the 
     U.S. we are subject to more than 100,000 reported rapes and 
     20,000 homicides. How do rape and murder in Haiti, no numbers 
     supplied, justify U.S. intervention? and if they do, where 
     were we in Rwanda?
       Is it possible that having no idea whatsoever about the 
     balance of power among nations, the workings of the 
     international system, and the causes and conduct of war, you 
     are directing the foreign relations of the United States of 
     America in accord with the priorities of feminism, 
     environmentalism, and political correctitude? Why not invade 
     Saudi Arabia because of the status of women there. Canada 
     because they kill baby seals. Papua New Guinea because it 
     doesn't have enough wheelchair ramps?
       Haitian illegal immigrants (did you not mention AIDS 
     because it would offend the Haitians, or some other group?) 
     have been to some extent motivated by the embargo and are a 
     minute proportion of the total that seek our shores. If it is 
     so that the best way to deal with a country that spills over 
     with souls is to invade it, que viva Mexico? Should the U.K. 
     invade Pakistan; France, Algeria; and Hong Kong, Vietnam? For 
     that matter, why have you not hastened forward to Havana? In 
     fact, the history of great-power interventions shows that 
     conquest does not prevent but, rather, facilitates population 
     transfers.
       Your desire to wipe out the expenditure of $14 million a 
     month to maintain the leaky embargo that you put in place was 
     not consonant with your robust urge to spend elsewhere, and 
     was a rather dainty pretext. Fourteen million dollars is what 
     we in this country spend on ``sausages and other prepared 
     meats'' every seven hours. if you truly believe, Mr. 
     President, that ``restoring Haiti's democratic government 
     will help lead to more stability and prosperity in our 
     region,'' then you, sir, have more Voo doo than they do. The 
     entire Haitian gross national product is worth but three 
     hours of our own. Were it to grow after intervention by 10% 
     and were the U.S. to reap fully one half the benefit, we 
     would surge ahead another nine minutes' worth of GNP. This is 
     not exactly high-stakes geopolitics.
       Why, then, Haiti? Why are your subordinates suddenly so 
     Churchillian? Clearly, in a real crisis they would be so 
     worked up that all their bulbs would burst. The nations towed 
     along for the ride (Poles? Jordanians?) seemed not to know 
     whether to be embarrassed by the stupidity of the task or 
     amused by the peculiarity of their bedfellows. This the 
     secretary of state described as ``a glowing coalition.'' 
     Never in the history of the English language has such an 
     inept phrase been launched with such forced enthusiasm to 
     miss so little a target. Granted, the vice president's 
     ``modalities of departure'' did much to inspire the nation to 
     a frenzy of war.
       Why Haiti? Because, like the father in Joyce's story, 
     ``Counterparts,'' who bullies his son because he cannot fight 
     his bullying boss, what you do in Haiti says less about Haiti 
     than about North Korea, Europe, and the Middle East, where 
     the real challenges lie, and where you cannot act because you 
     do not have a lamp to go by and you have forced your own 
     military to its knees.
       Why Haiti? Because you have been unable to say no to the 
     Black Caucus as it stands like the candlestick on the seesaw 
     of your grandiose legislation, and because you are a liberal 
     and in race you see wisdom, or lack of wisdom; qualification, 
     or lack of qualification; virtue, or lack of virtue. And 
     because the Black Caucus is way too tight with Father 
     Aristide.
       Why Haiti? Because you have no more sense of what to do or 
     where to turn in a foreign policy crisis than a moth in Las 
     Vegas at 2 a.m. You should not have singled out Haiti in the 
     first place, but once you did you should not have spent so 
     much time and so much capital on it, blowing it out of all 
     proportion, so that this, this Gulf Light, this No-Fat Desert 
     Storm, is your Stalingrad. Six weeks and it should have been 
     over, even including an invasion, about which the world would 
     have learned only after it had begun. All communications with 
     the Haitian regime should have been in private, leaving them 
     the flexibility to capitulate without your having to distract 
     Jimmy Carter from his other good works.
       Though you and your supporters made a marriage of 
     convenience with the principles of presidential war powers, 
     your new position is miraculously correct, while that of the 
     Republicans who also switched sides in the question is not. 
     You did have the legal authority to invade Haiti. What you 
     did not have was the moral authority. Despite what you have 
     maintained during the first 46/48ths of your life, the 
     decision was yours, but your power was merely mechanical.


                               dry bones

       Like your false-ringing speech, the dry bones of your 
     authority had none of the moral flesh and blood that might 
     otherwise have invigorated even a senseless policy. The 
     animation that you have failed to lend to this enterprise was 
     left to the soldiers in the field, who with the greatest 
     discipline and selflessness would have taken on the task 
     that, generations ago, you refused. I wonder if your view of 
     them has really changed. In your philosophy they must have 
     been pawns then, and they must be pawns now: The only thing 
     that has been altered is your position.
       Though it is fair to say that I differ with your policy, if 
     our soldiers had gone into combat I would have been behind 
     them 100%, and I hope that, despite the orders in Somalia, 
     you would have been too. This is a lesson that you might have 
     learned earlier but did not, the truth of which you now 
     embrace only because you have become president of the United 
     States. You are the man who will march only if he is 
     commander in chief. Yours, Mr. President, has been a very 
     expensive education. And, unfortunately, every man, woman, 
     and child in this country is destined to pay the bill for 
     your training not because it is so costly but because it is 
     so achingly incomplete.

                          ____________________