19718: May: Haiti's Requiem for Nation-Building - Doug Bandow (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Deirdre May <dsmay@temple.edu>

This is a controversial article. I recommend contacting the
author, Doug Bandow, a former assistant to Ronald Reagan,
with your thoughts at:

author@nationalreview.com

March 01, 2004, 8:52 a.m.
Haiti’s Requiem for Nation-Building
America can't right every wrong.

By Doug Bandow

Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has fled. The island
country is in crisis. The U.S. is sending Marines as part of
a multilateral peacekeeping force. Instead of occupying yet
another failed state, however, Washington should declare its
era of nation-building to be over.

A decade ago the Clinton administration, fresh from its
fiasco in Somalia, decided to save Haiti at the point of a
gun — or, more accurately, the guns of 20,000 American
soldiers. Stated Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch, "we
are determined to return democracy to Haiti." White House
Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers similarly explained: "It is
time to restore democracy to Haiti."

The military leaders fled. President Aristide returned.
America's democracy campaign triumphed.

Unfortunately, though President Aristide had been
democratically elected, he acted more like murderous French
revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre, to whom he
compared himself, than George Washington. Aristide intoned
the so-called necklace — a tire filled with flaming gasoline
which was frequently placed around the necks of his
opponents — to be a beautiful thing.

Haiti moved from a military dictatorship to a presidential
tyranny. Government was arbitrary; elections were rigged;
Aristide's thugs terrorized his opponents; poverty was
immiserating.

Even as its problems festered, Haiti disappeared from
Washington's radar screen. The Clinton administration was not
inclined to revisit the wisdom of returning Aristide to
power.

To the contrary, Washington moved on to new nation-building
adventures in Bosnia and Kosovo. Both occupations continue,
with artificial territorial entities ruled by outside
bureaucracies masquerading as democracies and countries.

But last fall Aristide's luck ended. He fell out with Amiot
Metayer, head of the Cannibal Army, a street gang that acted
as Aristide's foot soldiers. Metayer was murdered, Aristide's
followers were blamed, and the Cannibal Army switched sides.

Early in February the renamed Gonaives Resistance Front began
seizing control of Haitian cities, as other opponents of
Aristide, some democrats, some thugs, joined in. The regime
collapsed.

Naturally, Washington was expected to step into the breach.
The Bush administration proposed a power-sharing agreement
which would have kept Aristide in power for the remainder of
his term, until February 2006. The opposition understandably
said "No thanks."

In contrast, Aristide pushed for a foreign military presence
to maintain his power. "If we have a couple of dozen of
international soldiers, police, together right now, it could
be enough to send a positive signal to those terrorists," as
he described the gangsters he had once helped arm.

Even as his thugs took over the streets of Port-Au-Prince,
the capital, he waxed humanitarian. "Once they realize the
international community refuses [to allow] the terrorists to
keep killing people, we can prevent them" from killing more
people, said Aristide.

He had some American allies. Jesse Jackson, never hesitant to
meddle in conflicts not his own, demanded U.S.
intervention: "Unless something happens immediately, the
president could be killed. We must not allow that to happen
to that democracy."

But few foreign nations had either any illusion about Haiti
being a real democracy or any desire to buttress Aristide's
discredited, authoritarian rule. The Bush administration
refused to countenance another military invasion to sustain
America's one-time symbol of democracy.

So Aristide had little choice but to flee. Causing Washington
to try again.

"The government believes it is essential that Haiti have a
hopeful future," says President George W. Bush. "The United
States is prepared to help" end the violence in the island
nation.

The desire to intervene is understandable. Haiti is in chaos;
the people are poor; the island is unstable. Who wants a
failed state off of America's southern coast?

But, in fact, Haiti has been a failed state for 200 years.
There never was a time when the country was not in chaos, the
people were not poor, and the government was not unstable.
There was no democracy to restore in 1994 and there is none
now.

Nor was the 1994 invasion Washington's only attempt to fix
Haiti. The U.S. occupied the island from 1915 to 1934. Sadly
ephemeral were any benefits arriving with U.S. troops nine
decades ago. Just like a decade ago.

America now is talking about having an international force
protect a government run by Supreme Court Chief Justice
Boniface Alexandre while elections are organized. France,
Haiti's one-time colonial ruler, has developed an even more
complex five-point plan to rescue Haiti.

It likely will take more than five points to save the island,
but never mind. If France wants to try, it should be
encouraged to do so. Washington should stay out, however.

The U.S. has no strategic or security interest in Haiti.
Economic ties are minimal.

There's an obvious humanitarian crisis, but it is no
different than that present in two or three score other
nations around the globe. Haiti's unique threat is the
possible generation of a stream of refugees; that problem is
neither new nor serious. Indeed, the U.S. could easily
assimilate anyone desperate and dedicated enough to make it
across the narrow strait to Florida.

At the same time, Washington's military is stretched to the
breaking point around the globe. Some 110,000 soldiers and
Marines are being rotated into unpleasant and deadly duty in
Iraq. Another 10,000 are fighting in Afghanistan. Nearly
10,000 more remain on station patrolling the failed states of
Bosnia and Kosovo. Even larger garrisons protect prosperous
and populous states in East Asia and Europe.

With Pentagon officials worried about the impact of
increasingly frequent and lengthy foreign deployments on both
the active and reserve forces, it would be foolish to add
another difficult and unnecessary overseas posting to the
mix. America's unique international advantage is war
fighting. Let other states, like France, provide occupation
troops where and when necessary.

Few countries have had as tragic an experience as has Haiti.
But it is neither America's purpose nor within Washington's
power to right every wrong. The U.S. should stop trying to do
so.

— Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a
former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.