[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 138 (Wednesday, September 28, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      HAITI: THE CURRENT SITUATION

  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, we have just had a very instructive colloquy 
between the distinguished gentleman from California, Mr. Cox and our 
distinguished majority leader, and the distinguished whip, Mr. Gingrich 
on where we are going on the subject of the debate of Haiti. Is it not 
extraordinary that we could be standing here on the 9th day of the 
occupation of a friendly neighboring country finally saying that we are 
going to schedule a debate sometime next week that involves a country 
that has something like 15,000-plus of our Armed Forces at least 
partially in harm's way, certainly involved in a dangerous and volatile 
situation down there? A day late and a dollar short, does not quite say 
it when we talk about, in my view, the negligent way that the 
leadership of the Democrat Party has handled the debate and discussion 
of this subject in the House of Representatives.
  Certainly, the people of this country are very, very upset that 
Congress has not chimed in. The polls show that because most of the 
people across our country do not believe that we should have our troops 
in harm's way in Haiti. There is no national security reason for them 
to be there. There are very few national interests that can be resolved 
by putting our troops there. And there are certainly extra dangers and 
extra hazards involved for our troops who are there.
  So it would seem that we have been asking the wrong question for 
quite a while here about should we draw a date certain to get our 
troops out? I think that is the wrong question. I think the question to 
ask is when should we start pulling our troops out? And the answer is 
now, today, immediately. I do not know how long it will take to get 
15,000-plus troops out of Haiti, but it will surely take a while to do 
it in an orderly and safe way. I believe that process should start now.
  So, the question we should ask is when do we begin removing our 
troops from Haiti? I hope that the answer to that question, and I urge 
that the answer to that question, be now immediately. It turns out, as 
we read the newspaper accounts from down there, we are being asked to 
police virtually everything. It is not just the parliament building we 
are protecting today. It is the aid warehouses, we are going to have to 
protect President Aristide when he returns. Presumably, we are going to 
have to protect some of the members of the military who are going to be 
subject to an amnesty accord and protection when they are there because 
there are plenty of people who are mad at them and they are no longer 
in the army, no longer have the protection of their own army. Who is 
going to protect them? I presume that is part of President Carter's 
agreement with General Cedras and others in his junta.

                              {time}  1640

  That sort of leaves us in the position, America, where the taxpayer 
is paying for not only the bodyguards, but the palace guard of 
President Aristide who many will go back and read some of his comments 
and find that he has not been particularly a great fan of the United 
States of America or certainly of the form of government and democracy 
that we have here. That will probably agitate some Americans to learn 
that if they do not know it already.
  But then there is the other side of it. Are we also going to be 
providing bodyguards for General Cedras who has been described as one 
of the most brutal thugs in the Western Hemisphere? Are we going to 
give them each a Mercedes Benz that is armor plated so they can go 
about their business in downtown Port-au-Prince? It seems to me like we 
are really carving another giant taxpayers expense which would be 
laughable were it not so expensive and so dangerous.
  I do not think the administration has thought this thing out very 
well.
  Talking about dollars, we had the privilege today in the Committee on 
Rules of talking about the supplemental we will be dealing with under 
defense appropriations tomorrow. It will be $300 billion. That does not 
take care of the costs after the intervention slash invasion that came 
about a week ago Sunday. That is the costs up to that point. The 
estimate for the costs after that point, to follow the Pentagon plan 
and the administration plan that we have heard enunciated, gets up into 
the $2 billion-plus area. That is a lot of money for Haiti, and I would 
suggest, if we took all of these costs, and put them together, and 
divided it by the number of people in Haiti, and sent them a check or 
handed them dollars in their proportional share amount, we would have 
done a whole lot more for that democracy than the way it has been 
handled by the Clinton administration so far.
  The bottom line is we are going to become ever further sucked into 
this quagmire down there. We are told that we cannot distribute our aid 
supplies from the warehouses that are there right now. They are being 
trashed by the crowds who do not want to get the supplies out in an 
orderly way. Presumably some of them want to get them out for 
humanitarian purposes and for their own family and friends. Others 
inevitably probably exercise a little private enterprise, want to take 
some of those supplies and sell them on the black market. So, we have 
got to protect everything that is going on down there.
  It has almost gotten to the point, Mr. Speaker, that our military is 
going to have to protect not only their lives and the lives of each 
other, their buddies, their colleagues, but the equipment that we have 
there will start to mysteriously disappear into the night, the guns, 
the things we are trying to buy back. That program has not had great 
success so far. I understand we bought something like 18 guns back, but 
these are the kinds of things that have not been foreseen that a 
thoughtful foreign policy would have understood, and provided for, and, 
frankly, avoided.
  I see that my time has expired on me, but the subject is not expired, 
and I know others will take it up.

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