[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 4, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E772-E773]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


               CLINTON RELISHES HIS UNNECESSARY INVASION

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                          HON. CHRISTOPHER COX

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, April 4, 1995
  Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, the occasion of President 
Clinton's visit to Haiti is occasion to reflect on the ill wisdom of 
his policy there. It is ``his'' policy because, as he did with Mexico, 
he bypassed the Congress. The following article by Sir Eldon Griffiths 
is a sobering analysis of the Clinton Haiti policy.
               Clinton Relishes His Unnecessary Invasion

       By the time you read this, U.S. troops in Haiti will be 
     pulling out in favor of a U.S.-led, U.S.-munitioned, and 
     largely U.S.-financed U.N. army. President Clinton is in this 
     tiny speck of an island, ready to pass the baton--I almost 
     said the buck!--to U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-
     Ghali, whose thankless task now becomes to hold the ring in 
     Haiti while the smallest, poorest country in the Western 
     Hemisphere struggles to construct a ``viable democracy.''
       I wish the United Nations better luck than its hapless 
     multinational forces experienced after the United States 
     handed over Somalia. Let's also acknowledge that six months--
     and several billion dollars--after Jimmy Carter brokered his 
     deal and Bill Clinton sent in an air-sea armada with more 
     firepower than all the armies of Latin America combined. Port 
     au Prince is probably less dangerous than it was under the 
     rule of Raoul Cedras and his thugs. With the U.S. embargo 
     lifted, some, though by no means all, of Haiti's services and 
     small firms are back in business. Most of those Haitian boat 
     people intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard as they tried to 
     get to Florida are being repatriated, many forcibly, from the 
     unsanitary camps that shame America in Cuba and Panama.
       Last Tuesday's high-noon murder of a prominent Haitian 
     lawyer who had criticized President Aristide is, however, a 
     reminder that Port au Prince still is riven by dangerous 
     elements, but thanks to the U.S. Marines (and a growing 
     Haitian police force), the situation in the capital has 
     improved to a point where it's less frightening to walk in 
     the streets at night than it is in, let's say, Washington, 
     D.C.
       Clinton has every reason to praise the U.S. forces. They 
     did what he told them to do. But his claim that his Haiti was 
     a ``triumph'' is none the less as spurious as it is self-
     deceiving. This version of events may sit well with those 
     Haitians who've done well from Aristide's return; it may also 
     carry the day with the liberal press and what's left of the 
     Black Caucus in Congress. But history, I predict, will judge 
     Clinton's Haitian adventure less generously. More likely it 
     will be seen as an unnecessary, grotesque mismatch of U.S. 
     power to U.S. interests.
       Is that too harsh a verdict? If you think so, just ask 
     three questions:
       Did Haiti under Cedras (or any other ruler) pose a threat 
     to U.S. security? It didn't. It couldn't. It doesn't. Haiti 
     has no military airfields, no naval ports, no missiles sites 
     like those in Cuba that enemies of America might use. 
     Militarily, Clinton's invasion was a classic case of using a 
     billion dollar hammer to crack a 20-cent nut.
       Was Haiti crucial to the economic interests of the United 
     States? No, it wasn't. It isn't. It couldn't be. Haiti has no 
     oil, no minerals, no products of any kind the United States 
     needs to earn its living. Trade with Haiti is so 
     insignificant that when the United States imposed a total 
     embargo, few Americans even noticed, outside a few travel 
     agents in Miami.
       Were the lives of American citizens at risk in Haiti? No, 
     they weren't. Despite all the efforts of the State 
     Department, not one example was found of Americans suffering 
     oppression or wrongful imprisonment in Haiti. Lacking these 
     or any other reasons of U.S. national interest, President 
     Clinton based his case for invading Haiti on the need to 
     impose--or restore--democracy. But why in Port au Prince, but 
     not--as Ronald Reagan sought to do in the face of Clinton's 
     criticism at the time--in Salvador or Panama or Nicaragua?
       Okay, Cedras was a rightwing brute, just as Aristide is a 
     leftwing demagogue. But if Cedras was grinding down the 
     Haitian people to a level that justified U.S. intervention, 
     why didn't Washington first try to overthrow him with the CIA 
     (as it did in Guatemala and Cuba)? And how come, when Jimmy 
     Carter went to Haiti with Colin Powell and Sam Nunn, Carter 
     claimed the U.S. embargo was ``shameful'' and called Cedras 
     ``an honorable man'' with whom the United States could do 
     business?
       When the full story comes to be told, Haiti, I suspect, 
     will turn out to have been the Unnecessary Invasion. The 
     United States got sucked into it in large part because 
     candidate Clinton publicly broke with George Bush's policy of 
     sending back the Haitian boat people, with the result that 
     hundreds of thousands set off for Florida, creating a problem 
     that Clinton in office found he couldn't handle. Clinton was 
     then humiliated when he sent in the USS Harlan County supply 
     ship with a bunch of officials on board who turned tail at 
     the first whiff of grapeshot from Cedras's goons on the dock. 
     And so it came to pass that stopping the flow of refugees 
     (that Clinton himself had invited), and putting Aristide back 
     in Cedras's place, became the leitmotifs of U.S. foreign 
     policy.
       Never mind Cuba, where the dictatorship was harsher and the 
     outflow of migrants larger. Forget Rwanda, where millions 
     died, or Angola and all the rest. Haiti was a case of 
     presidential pique and strategic misjudgment, of liberal 
     idealism, and Florida's Democratic politics getting in the 
     way of any objective long-term assessments of U.S. diplomatic 
     priorities and America's true national interests.
       So when the president returns to Washington, let's hope he 
     lays aside his mantle of Liberator--or is it Conqueror?--of 
     Haiti. 
     [[Page E773]]  Time has come to return to the real world of 
     global issues. Clinton's relations with Father Aristide may 
     just be hunky-dory, but with most of the other leaders of 
     Europe and Asia, they are as frosty as at any time I can 
     remember.
       Perhaps John Major of Britain, who arrives in Washington 
     this weekend, will point this out.
       (Sir Eldon is president of the Orange County World Affairs 
     Council, a former member of the British House of Commons, and 
     director of the Center for International Business at Chapman 
     University.)
     

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