[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 132 (Tuesday, September 20, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
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]

 
                            REGARDING HAITI

  Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the deal that the 
Carter dilomatic mission made with the Haitian junta.
  The merits of the deal have been discussed at length. The shortfalls 
of the deal have also been discussed. Yet, what is missing is what this 
deal shows about the Clinton administration.
  First and foremost, this deal shows that the administration is 
incapable of forming a coherent foreign policy. No country believes 
that this administration has any credibility. The administration 
continues to make deals with dictators and quickly forgets its 
friends--President Aristide is reportedly already very displeased that 
a deal has been made that allows the generals to remain free. Finally, 
the need to send former President Carter, Senator Nunn, and General 
Powell illustrates that our Secretary of State is clearly irrelevant.
  In relation to the administration's lack of credibility in foreign 
affairs, little more need be said than that General Cedras, according 
to Mr. Carter, never did believe that the United States would attack. 
Even after bearing witness to the most advertised invasion in history, 
and the formation of a ``glowing coalition,'' that was neither glowing 
nor a coalition, but a show for the world to see, Cedras still didn't 
believe that an invasion was coming until he was told that the planes 
were said to have been in the air.
  Interestingly, the same President that labeled Cedras and his cohorts 
as ``dictators,'' was quick to make a deal with them. This should not 
be strange for an administration that has concluded an agreement with 
Fidel Castro, negotiated with Hafez Assad, and appeased the Chinese 
dictators. In each case, the action was in direct contradiction to the 
stated policies and pronouncements that the administration had once 
set.
  Beyond the negotiations, one has to wonder where was Secretary of 
State Christopher? Has he disappeared? During the Iraq crisis, 
Secretary of State Baker was the man that President Bush relied upon to 
attempt a last minute negotiation with the Iraqis. Where was Secretary 
Christopher and why didn't the President send him to negotiate a deal 
with the Haitians? Moreover, why didn't the President send him, or for 
that matter, anyone else, earlier?
  Whatever the outcome of this latest crisis, one thing is abundantly 
clear: This administration is unable to set a clear and coherent 
foreign policy. Because of this, the Nation is quickly becoming the 
laughingstock of the world. We can be bullied to back down, outsmarted, 
or simply outlasted by any two-bit dictatorship that is willing to 
challenge us.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following articles be 
included in the Record, at the conclusion of my remarks: ``A Soldier of 
the Not Great War,'' by Mark Helprin: ``Aristide's Policemen,'' by 
Robert D. Novak; and ``Aristide's Silence Silence Conveys 
Disappointment in Deal,'' by John M. Goshko and Gary Lee.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [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 fire 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 objects 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 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 has 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 soldier 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 if is so costly but because it is 
     so achingly incomplete.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 19, 1994]

                          Aristide's Policeman

                          (By Robert D. Novak)

       Jean-Bertrand Aristide's principal police recruiter 
     received a reluctant U.S. stamp of approval despite secret 
     intelligence linking him to a notorious Haitian death squad 
     and despite opposition from the State Department's anti-
     narcotics officer.
       Lt. Col. Pierre Cherubin is connected by official State 
     Department documents to one of the worst atrocities during 
     Aristide's eight months as president of Haiti before he was 
     toppled by an army coup: the murder of five youths three 
     years ago. For the United States to acquiesce in Cherubin's 
     police role conflicts with President Clinton's citing of the 
     human rights issue as justification for military intervention 
     in Haiti.
       It also stirs doubts about the ``new Haiti'' given birth by 
     U.S. military force. Aristide, described by President Clinton 
     as a new-born democrat devoted to constitutional principles, 
     in picking Cherubin has warned that he could repeat the 
     excesses of his brief regime. The Clinton administration, in 
     turn, shows it will not be too severe in its oversight of the 
     Aristide restoration.
       The sudden appearance of Cherubin recently at Guantanamo 
     Bay, Cuba, recruiting Haitian refugees to join the country's 
     reconstituted post-invasion force sent shock waves through 
     Washington. He is frequently--and unfavorably--mentioned in 
     files of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and 
     Research as police chief under Aristide. These papers put him 
     at Aristide's side Sept. 29, 1991, approving the Haitian 
     president's order to execute Roger LaFontant, a supporter of 
     the Duvalier dictatorship, in his prison cell. Aristide was 
     overthrown by a military coup the next day.
       The most damning indictment of Cherubin in secret U.S. 
     papers concerns the murder of the youths on July 26, 1991, by 
     the police antigang unit. The killings were allegedly carried 
     out by Cherubin's subordinate and the unit's deputy 
     commander, 2nd Lt. Richard (Sha Sha) Salomon. Cables to 
     Washington from the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince accused 
     Cherubin of blocking an investigation.
       According to a State Department document, Salomon belonged 
     to ``a politically activist group of officers that Aristide 
     directed be put in positions of authority,'' though many 
     (including Salomon) had been cashiered out of the army. 
     Cherubin is associated with the group.
       The document cites allegations that Aristide's prime 
     minister, Rene Preval, ``secretly authorized . . . Cherubin 
     to execute certain criminals without benefit of due process'' 
     and that ``Cherubin passed along these instructions to the 
     anti-gang Unit.'' It was further charged that ``this new get-
     tough policy resulted in the torture and execution of the 
     five youths.'' The paper cites ``circumstantial evidence'' 
     that would make it ``difficult to believe Aristide was not 
     fully informed.''
       On top of all this, U.S. officials recently received new 
     accusations that Cherubin has been involved in the drug 
     trade.
       That this was taken seriously is shown by the attempt to 
     block Cherubin's appointment (reported to me by well-placed 
     congressional sources) by Robert Gelbard, assistant secretary 
     of state for international narcotics. Gelbard, a professional 
     foreign service officer, as deputy assistant secretary for 
     inter-American affairs in both the Bush and Clinton 
     administrations was a staunch supporter of Aristide's 
     restoration.
       Gelbard was overruled, and Cherubin went to Guantanamo. 
     That suggests the United States is not prepared to monitor 
     Aristide's appointments the way it did in El Salvador during 
     that government's struggle against communist insurgents. 
     Former Rep. William Gray, Clinton's unpaid, part-time special 
     adviser on Haiti, has made it a point to get along with 
     Aristide, and that rules out confirming his lieutenants.
       Administration officials get fuzzy when asked just how much 
     control they will exercise over the new Haitian security 
     forces. They describe a ``double-key'' system under which 
     either side--the United States or the Haitians--can veto any 
     prospective policeman. But what about the police chiefs? 
     There, it seems, Washington will not press too hard to 
     exclude people like Cherubin.
       Accordingly, the U.S. policy boils down to trust in 
     Aristide. In the East Room of the White House Friday over 
     international television, he preached reconciliation. 
     Speaking at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church the previous 
     Sunday, he talked of restoring democracy to Haiti through a 
     ``Caesarean operation.'' To some present, that sounded like a 
     bloody solution. The reemergence of Pierre Cherubin tends to 
     confirm those suspicions.
                                  ____


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

Aristide's Silence Conveys Disappointment in Deal: Ousted Leader Fears 
                        New Threats, Sources Say

                    (By John M. Goshko and Gary Lee)

       Deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is upset 
     and bitterly disappointed by the deal to remove Haiti's 
     military dictatorship because it allows key military leaders 
     to remain in Haiti, where Aristide fears they could pose new 
     threats to his rule, sources close to him said yesterday.
       Perhaps the most eloquent comment on how Aristide felt was 
     his silence. He met for hours with advisers to discuss a 
     possible news conference or statement. But by the end of the 
     day, the Aristide camp had reached no decision on what to say 
     publicly, and it deferred a possible statement until today.
       Aristide's restoration to power at the head of a democratic 
     government is the stated reason for the U.S. action in Haiti, 
     and the three years of agonizing diplomacy and threats that 
     led up to it. Yet he has not appeared in public since Friday, 
     when he joined President Clinton and Caribbean leaders at the 
     White House demonstration of solidarity, and his name was 
     barely mentioned yesterday in voluminous briefings and news 
     conferences by administration officials who credited the 
     Haitian military for cooperating with U.S. forces.
       His aides said Aristide was grateful that the United States 
     finally had succeeded in ousting the military regime, and 
     they said he was very glad that the crisis had been resolved 
     in a way designed to prevent casualties on either side.
       ``Still it obviously is not a very good agreement from his 
     perspective, and his dilemma now is how to make clear the 
     dangers it poses without appearing to be ungrateful to the 
     United States,'' one source said.
       Aristide's advisers privately criticized nearly every 
     aspect of the agreement reached between the Haitian military 
     and the three-man delegation led by former president Jimmy 
     Carter. It includes a provision allowing Haitian armed forces 
     chief Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras to remain in power until Oct. 15 
     and envisions an amnesty for him and other military leaders.
       ``By now the United States should have learned that with 
     these people a deal is not a deal,'' said another well-
     informed source, referring to the military regime's past 
     record of broken promises. ``They will now use the grace 
     period the agreement gives them to try to bargain further so 
     they can stay on and cause trouble.''
       ``President Aristide believed the assurances of President 
     Clinton that Cedras and the others would have to leave 
     Haiti,'' the source said. The source added that as recently 
     as Saturday, when the Carter mission began, ``Aristide was 
     being assured that the Clinton administration would accept 
     nothing less than * * *. Cedras and the others being put on a 
     plane to Panama. Instead, it ends up with them being allowed 
     to stay and possibly getting amnesty for all the crimes they 
     have committed.''
       The sources described as misleading statements by Clinton 
     and Carter that a year-old accord signed by Aristide and 
     Cedras provided a full amnesty for Haitian armed forces 
     members. They said the agreement, signed at Governors Island, 
     N.Y., was limited to ``political crimes,'' in accordance with 
     the limits placed on presidential power by the Haitian 
     constitution. Cedras abrogated the agreement, and it was 
     never carried out.
       Amnesty for non-political crimes such as murder, rape and 
     looting of public funds--crimes that Clinton accused the 
     military leaders of committing in a national television 
     address last Thursday--can be granted only by the Haitian 
     Parliament.
       One of the things that remains unclear about the new 
     agreement, however, is who will constitute the Haitian 
     Parliament that will determine whether there are new amnesty 
     provisions. After the military held elections early last year 
     to fill 13 parliamentary vacancies left by members who fled 
     into exile with Aristide following the September 1991 
     military coup, the United States and the international 
     community declared the body illegal.
       But Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Sunday night 
     that the United States would try to facilitate the return of 
     Aristide's parliamentary supporters, thereby implying that 
     the parliament would be restored to its former legitimacy so 
     it could act on an extended amnesty.
       Clinton administration officials had made special efforts 
     to keep Aristide abreast of the Carter negotiations while 
     they were underway. On Sunday, national security adviser 
     Anthony Lake and Clinton's special adviser for Haiti, William 
     H. Gray III, held two lengthy meetings with Aristide to brief 
     him on the negotiations and the reasons why the 
     administration thought the deal should be made.
       A senior administration official said Lake and Gray spoke 
     with Aristide again yesterday. Asked about Aristide's 
     silence, the official said, ``Some things take time.''
       ``We've talked to him, and I think he'll speak for 
     himself,'' the official added. ``He's a thoughtful person, 
     and he's going to think about what's best for his vision of 
     the future. I think he ultimately will see that this is very 
     much in his interest.''
       Other U.S. officials said that with 15,000 U.S. troops in 
     Haiti by Oct. 15, the military leaders will not be in a 
     position to challenge Aristide or to incite violence. Some 
     U.S. officials hinted that they expect Cedras and his chief 
     cohorts to recognize that without control of the armed 
     forces, they face potential danger from a populace that is 
     strongly pro-Aristide and would elect to leave the country 
     for their own safety.
       However, many of Aristide's American supporters continued 
     to voice deep-seated mistrust of giving Cedras the option of 
     staying in the country. Randall Robinson, a human-rights 
     activist who staged a hunger strike last spring that helped 
     to force Clinton into a tougher stance on Haiti, called the 
     military leaders ``murderous thugs.''
       At a news conference, Robinson voiced ``serious 
     misgivings'' about the Carter agreement and said it should be 
     amended to demand that Cedras and other military leaders 
     leave Haiti.

                          ____________________