He can raise the prospect of U.S. intervention in Haiti one day and let it fade the next. That’s what happened last week, when Clinton told CNN viewers, “We cannot afford to discount the prospect of a military option.” The next day the administration was talking tougher sanctions instead of U.S. troops. On Friday Madeleine Albright, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, pushed the Security Council to adopt a new resolution that choked off most trade with Haiti, banned all but commercial flights and recommended freezing the assets of military officers. But even some White House aides wondered what the embargo would accomplish, aside from hurting the very people whom Clinton hoped to save. Months will pass before U.N. monitors arrive in the Dominican Republic to close off its leaky border with Haiti, over which much of the contraband flows. Most troubling is what to do if the latest squeeze fails to dislodge the Haitian junta.
Haiti remains an almost insoluble puzzle because of deep-rooted U. S. ambivalence on many fronts-starting with Aristide. Elected president by a two-thirds majority, the firebrand priest was overthrown in 1991 and set up shop in Washington, where his obstinate refusal to compromise with his enemies has cost him support in the administration. Haiti’s military is a problem, too. The White House knows that the army leaders and their “attaches” are little more than murderers, but still seems to think that they represent the only stable institution in Haiti-and so must be reckoned with one way or another. Finally, there’s the potential refugee crisis. Clinton campaigned on a pledge to reverse George Bush’s policy of forced repatriation at sea, and then embraced it even before he took office. Now the president has decided to reverse himself again setting up centers outside Haiti to process the asylum claims of refugees.
Clinton could probably afford to ignore Haiti altogether. There’s little emphatic domestic pressure to resolve the festering situation. But friends of Aristide’s-and others-have naggingly kept the issue alive. The Congressional Black Caucus has threatened to withhold support for key legislation unless the president takes a firmer stand. Randall Robinson, who pressured the Reagan administration to impose sanctions against South Africa, is starving himself to draw attention to the plight of refugees. Clinton, he says, “has set up a dragnet around Haiti to catch Haitians and return them to the killing fields.” Even Lawrence Pezzullo-the recently ousted U.S. envoy to Haiti who will be replaced by United Negro College Fund president Bill Gray-refused to go quietly. In an op-ed piece, Pezzullo complained that the new White House policy “has no prospect of returning democracy or Aristide to Haiti.”
The president apparently can’t shake the impulse to do something to help relieve Haiti’s misery. “I have heard him say two or three times with real anger, ‘They aye cutting people’s faces off’,” says a senior administration official. The Pentagon isn’t eager to invade, but concedes that it could do the job swiftly. The Haitian military-a few thousand lightly armed, poorly trained soldiers and thugs-would buckle easily under an assault by the 82d Airborne paratroopers, army rangers and navy SEAL commandos. The biggest headache comes later-turning the country over to a leader without political, judicial or military institutions. It’s always easier to go in than to get out.
