[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]

 
                     UNITED STATES POLICY ON HAITI

  Mr. WALLOP. Madam President, I take great exception to the notion, 
which I consider very misguided, that the administration's Haiti policy 
has somehow been vindicated. The President may well have scored an 
immediate political success, but his policies are no more compelling 
today than they were last week. And the dilemma we face, he faces, the 
Nation faces, remains fundamentally unchanged.
  The agreement reached over the weekend which allowed U.S. military 
personnel to enter Haiti without initial resistance does not in any way 
remove the most glaring defect in the President's Haiti policy. First, 
there are no goals. There are no benchmarks by which the public, by 
which the press, by which the Congress, by which our military can judge 
the completion of their tasks. There is nothing that we can look at on 
any horizon and say they have done it, or another 3 weeks and they will 
have done it, or another 3 months and they will have done it, because 
it does not exist. It has never been laid down as somewhere to go or 
something to do.
  Our military has no enemy, but it has plenty of danger. Sadly, their 
reputation is on the line because who threatens them cannot be known, 
but it does not lessen the threat that they face. And somewhere--mark 
my words--with this CNN operation, there is going to come a moment when 
a soldier or sailor or marine is confronted with a circumstance that 
looks for all the world like peril to his or her own body, or that of 
their unit, and a violent reaction is going to end out with a pregnant 
woman shot, a child maimed, or some other dreadful pictures. And it 
will not be the fault of those military people, but of a nation which 
sent them to do a job but has not been able to tell them what it is.
  If our objective, if the President's objective, is the restoration of 
Aristide, let us be prepared for a full withdrawal the day after he 
returns and has shaken our hand. But our objective is much more open 
ended and without definition. Aristide seems an irrelevant stop on the 
way, and he is arrogant enough to be complaining about the sacrifice 
that this Nation's taxpayers have made, this Nation's military people 
have made, to return him to power. How dare that insolent man take 
objection. But then we have only to know that this man is no priest, as 
the press and some on the left have described him. He is defrocked and 
a communist, and a detester of the United States.
  If our capacity is to build the foundations of order and democracy, 
then surely the administration has lost sight of the lessons learned in 
Somalia, also open ended, also ending in catastrophe, as this surely 
will, and also ending with the United States representative sneaking 
out in the dark of night.
  In Haiti today, U.S. military forces are once again in this task of 
nation building. Madam President, nations are not built by foreign 
powers, not even ones with good will such as our good Nation. Nations 
grow from within. Nations are only controlled by foreign powers. And, 
therefore, when our military is asked to perform this inappropriate 
task in the midst of civil strife and fundamental division between 
rival factions, make no mistake. We will end out the detested party by 
those we were sent to help. As in Somalia, United States military 
personnel in Haiti will be appealing targets for those unhappy with 
whatever status quo we attempt to enforce.
  Without exception, Madam President, our military leaders, our 
diplomatic personnel, and our congressional leaders have said that the 
hard part, the dangerous part, would be the occupation of Haiti, not 
the invasion of Haiti.
  Well, Madam President, now we are an occupying power. The fact of the 
matter is that we have no business choosing sides in a domestic 
conflict where both sides have more than enough blood on their hands. 
If our forces stay long enough, they will become the targets of 
resentment from both sides. The recent agreement in no way alters this 
fundamental dilemma. Though it may have taken the moment's political 
heat off the President, it in no way declared or defined our military 
mission, our U.S. policy, or even indeed our purpose.
  I will not support any resolution praising this agreement or the 
President because we do not yet know what it is that we would be 
praising or thanking them for except the moment's relief in a long 
scale of the policy that is still mystical to most people on both sides 
of the political aisle.
  In my view, we deferred rather than resolved the fundamental flaws in 
the administration's Haiti policy. Such an outcome does not deserve the 
Senate's applause but its very real concern and ultimately, 
fundamentally, and finally, a debate--even though we are now there--on 
why it is we are there and what it is we expect to do there. Until we 
know what it is we expect to do, we will never know when we have done 
what somebody had in mind when they put this Nation in line for the 
expenditures of hundreds of millions of dollars to do what and to 
accept what danger, for what purpose, and for how long? When will they 
come home? When will it be that we can have been judged as a Nation 
that has done right or wrong, because right or wrong will never have 
been part of the equation that the American people have been asked to 
conclude?
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. PRESSLER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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