[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 41 (Monday, October 16, 1995)]
[Pages 1824-1826]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Celebration of the Anniversary of the Restoration of 
Democracy in Haiti

October 12, 1995

    Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary General. This marks the second 
time in 2 days I have been here. I promise I won't come back tomorrow 
and interrupt your lives. [Laughter] Madam Foreign Minister, to the 
distinguished Prime Minister of St. Kitts, and others who are here who 
were part of that remarkable coalition that restored democracy to Haiti 
a year ago. Let me say I was looking out at this crowd tonight, and when 
my friend

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of 25 years, Taylor Branch, told me that this event was going to come to 
pass, I redid my schedule just so I could come by here and thank so many 
of you for what you did. I want to thank my longtime friend Bill Gray 
for agreeing to be pressed back into public service for the work that he 
did. I want to thank all the people in the United States who cared about 
Haiti, who wrote me letters and called me on the phone and came to see 
me about it and talked to me about what was at stake.
    Randall Robinson even went on a diet for Haiti. [Laughter] Jonathan 
Demme wrote me letters that were even more eloquent than the films that 
he makes. [Laughter] And many others did as well. I thank you all for 
your concern.
    I want to thank our partners in the hemisphere. When the United 
States decided that if necessary we would use force to remove the 
military regime and to restore President Aristide and democracy, I was 
so determined that no one would think we were trying to revive any 
hemispheric imperialism. I have worked very hard to establish a new 
sense of partnership, a new sense of common bond, a new sense of common 
mission with all the nations of the Caribbean, of Central and South 
America.
    The First Lady would like to be here tonight. She is in Nicaragua as 
we speak, on her way to a four-nation tour of Latin America. We care 
deeply about how other people who share our neighborhoods feel about the 
United States and that they understand that we believe we have a common 
destiny.
    And so I don't think this operation ever would have worked as it 
should have worked had it not been for all the other countries who were 
willing to participate with us. Even though we had a United Nations 
mandate, what really made it go was all of our neighbors participating, 
sending their soldiers, sending their police monitors, participating, 
standing up for it. It made an enormous difference.
    I want to say a special word of thanks to all the people within our 
administration who supported my action. And needless to say, it was 
hotly debated. And all the political polls said it was a dumb thing to 
do. And I said, well, I do a lot of things that the polls--[laughter]. 
But it seemed to be the right thing to do. Two of them are here, the 
Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Sandy Berger. And people 
that aren't here, Tony Lake and the Vice President, were all very 
strongly in support of the action that our administration took. And I 
appreciate that very much.
    And finally let me say to General Fisher and to everyone who was 
involved first in the multinational force and then in the United Nations 
force, I am very proud and grateful for the performance of the United 
States military in Haiti. They made all Americans proud. And they made 
this whole thing possible, and we thank you, too, sir.
    One of the best things that's happened to me in the last year is a 
few months after the restoration of President Aristide, one of the 
military officers who was involved in the operation--and I don't want to 
embarrass him, so I won't say his name--but I was having a rather 
interesting conversation with him, and he looked at me, and he said, 
``You know, Mr. President, when you did this, I just didn't know. But, 
you know, that was a good thing we did. It was the right thing to do.'' 
And I was--coming from a person of few words and high performance, I 
treasured that.
    I thank Brian Atwood and the work that AID is doing in Haiti. And 
all of you should relish this celebration for all of the work that all 
of you did and the contributions you made, all of the groups and the 
individuals. Tonight I hope you will think about what we all have to do 
to make sure that this extraordinary endeavor succeeds.
    The United States has worked hard in the last year to help to 
establish an electoral process which is proceeding. We have worked hard 
to try to establish a system of law and order which is making progress. 
But in the end, the Foreign Minister and all of the people in her 
government and President Aristide have to be able to prove that freedom 
and democracy can bring the benefits that we know it can bring.
    And Haiti was plundered for a very long time. It has been 
environmentally ravaged. When I went back to Haiti for the first time 
since my wife and I went there in December of 1975, I was literally 
shocked to see the deterioration of the environment, the topsoil

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running thin and all of the things that had happened.
    We all have a lot of work to do there. And in the end, we have to 
make it possible for the people of Haiti who are willing to work and 
learn and grow to compose a life, to stabilize their families, to live 
out their dreams. And we have a lot more work to do there.
    So I ask you to celebrate this extraordinary evening by reaffirming 
your determination to help the people who live there keep their 
democracy alive and bring its benefits to ordinary citizens, to infuse 
new investment, to create new jobs, to develop a sustainable economic 
program while restoring the environment, to do all those things that 
they might have done for themselves had they had a longer period of time 
free of oppression.
    I must say that when I went to Haiti, I was very moved by what I 
saw, by the spirit of the people and the openness to the possibilities 
of the future. But we all know that the future is not free of 
difficulties.
    So if you are still today as firmly convinced as you were a year ago 
that this is the right thing to do, if you feel as deeply proud today as 
you did a year ago, then you have to make your convictions good by 
making sure that we do not fail in this common endeavor, that democracy 
ultimately triumphs, that freedom is ultimately the victor, and that 
there is some prosperity for those good people who have suffered too 
long, borne too much, and now have to have our continued partnership to 
build the kind of future that all of us want for ourselves, our 
families, and our children. I know we can do it but we must get about 
it, and we must stay with it until the job is done.
    Thank you, good luck, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 7:10 p.m. at the Organization of American 
States. In his remarks, he referred to Secretary General Ceasar Gaviria 
of the Organization of American States; Foreign Minister Claudette 
Werleigh of Haiti; Prime Minister Kennedy Simmonds of St. Kitts and 
Nevis; author Taylor Branch; Special Adviser on Haiti William H. Gray 
III; Randall Robinson, executive director, TransAfrica Forum; and movie 
director Jonathan Demme.