25309: Fuller: Wash Post editorial-Marines to Haiti? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Anne Fuller <affuller3@yahoo.com>

Wash Post editorial
A Battalion for Haiti
June 5, 2005

THE NEW secretary general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel 
Insulza, has pledged to bring up the subject of Haiti at the OAS general 
assembly beginning tomorrow in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. If so, it won?t be a 
moment too soon. Fifteen months after U.S. forces escorted a besieged President 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile, Haiti once again is on the brink of chaos. 
An international peacekeeping mission mandated by the United Nations has been a 
failure ; the interim government has not managed to create the conditions that 
would allow for promised elections in October. Another rescue is needed, one 
that would benefit from OAS diplomacy but must be founded on the restoration of 
order. That probably can?t happen without American troops.

At the moment, any international diplomat who sought to save the political 
situation would first have to save himself from the armed gangs that openly 
roam much of the capital, Port-au-Prince. One group of carjackers killed a 
French diplomat last week. Both France and the United States have recently 
warned their citizens to stay out of the country, and the U.S. Embassy 
evacuated non-emergency personnel last month. Haitians have nowhere to run, and 
more than 700 have been killed since last September : some by gangs that 
support Mr. Aristide ; some by their enemies in the former Haitian army ; some 
by the Haitian national police force that nominally operates under the control 
of the interim government ; and some by drug traffickers and other common 
criminals.

A year ago the United Nations mandated a 7,400-member international force led 
by Brazil to provide security and disarm the gangs. It hasn?t come close to 
accomplishing its mission. A hodgepodge of Latin American troops supplemented 
by soldiers from Jordan, Nepal, Croatia and other unlikely friends of Haiti, it 
lacks the cohesion, professionalism or stomach for taking on the militants. "I 
insist the problem in Haiti is more social and economical than military," 
Brazilian commander Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira claimed recently. That has 
been Brazil?s consistent excuse for its commanders? military failing.

Haiti?s ills are surely legion ­ endemic poverty and malnutrition, an absence 
of resources, and a deep divide between a tiny economic elite and a desperate 
majority. A paralyzing conflict between Mr. Aristide?s mostly poor supporters 
and politicians representing the middle and upper classes has survived his 
removal ; the interim government has imprisoned senior officials of the former 
regime without due process, and Mr. Aristide?s party is threatening a boycott 
of the scheduled elections. Aggressive outside intervention is needed to 
address these problems, by jump-starting long-promised reconstruction projects 
and brokering a political accord that would make elections meaningful.

None of that can happen, however, while thugs with automatic weapons roam 
Haiti?s streets. Many Haitians and international observers in Port-au-Prince 
believe a small but focused and determined force ­ say, a few hundred U.S. 
Marines ­ could put a stop to such anarchy. The U.S. embassy in Haiti has 
recommended that the administration consider dispatching such a force, which 
could work in tandem with the U.N. mission. This has prompted understandable 
questions from an overtaxed Pentagon : What is the mission ? When would it end 
? As it struggles with too few troops to restore security in Iraq, the U.S. 
military cannot easily afford another difficult and open-ended assignment.

Haiti, however, is not Iraq ; it is a small country 600 miles from Florida that 
has been dependent on the United States for its security for more than a 
century. The idea that it could be stabilized without American help was 
optimistic a year ago ; by now the fallacy is obvious. If Haiti is to be 
secured or is to hold a democratic election, it will need the help of at least 
a few hundred American fighters. The sooner they go, the easier their task will 
be.