In the two weeks that I was in Haiti, the armored vehicle parked behind General Cedras’s office wasn’t moved or maintained once. Its .50-caliber main gun was red with rust. The Haitian helicopter and aircraft fleet are inoperable museum pieces. The dozen obsolete artillery pieces haven’t been fired for years, and the 7,600-man Haitian military force doesn’t have the skill and dedication to fight its way out of a retirement home. In short, the 2,000 U.S. troops now sweating it out offshore could seize the country in roughly the time it takes them to sing The Marine’s Hymn.
But dumping Cedras and his comedy commandos to reinstall President Jean-Bertrand Aristide won’t change Haiti’s tragic pattern of military takeovers and killings. Nor would the shuffle necessarily bring democracy or law and order. Aristide is viewed by many as an unstable demagogue who won the election by manipulating the desperate, illiterate masses. Before I could ask a question, people I interviewed told me that they would take Aristide out at first sight. About 10,000 gun-toting troops, national-police bullies and hired thugs would vie with thousands of well-armed independents to pull the trigger. And even if Aristide survived, he might simply swap one set of thugs for another.
The American invasion fleet should be brought home and the costly embargo lifted. U.S. national security is not at stake. Embargoes don’t work. And American taxpayers’ pockets aren’t deep enough to bail Haiti out of a mess that has been 500 years in the making. It takes guts to admit that the poker bluff failed and to walk away from the table before the gunfight that the United Nations now has approved. But both President Clinton and General Cedras should go back to square one. Every possible step must be taken before committing U.S. forces. One answer: Latin America should be pushed to join a regional guardianship to hold Haiti in trust and provide the aid and leadership that the country so desperately needs. It’s time to take the hurt out of Haiti – and that’s not a soldier’s job.
