THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 6, 1994 TAG: 9409030034
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
U.S. officials lining up Caribbean allies for support in what they call an ``inevitable'' invasion of Haiti scare wary Americans more than a Haitian regime cocky enough to break a longstanding taboo against killing priests. The officials' tour is a prelude to gunboat democracy; and though any armed invasion carries risks to U.S. troops, the gunboats - more than a dozen of them in the region - would have the easier task: getting the military regime out of power.
Getting democracy to take root in a country with only the briefest experience of it in almost two centuries of existence will be the harder, prolonged part.
Yet State Department and Pentagon of-fi-cials have toured the region's capitals, calling an invasion ``inevitable.'' They do so in part to dispel reports that the U.S. military is loath to invade and in part to pressure Haiti's closest neighbor, the Dominican Republic, into halting the smuggling, particularly of gasoline, that keeps the Haitian military in gear.
Until the smuggling stops, sanctions cannot begin to bite where they must to topple the regime. And the Clinton administration is determined to give sanctions every chance to work before it gives the regime a deadline to depart or else.
Even so, sanctions rarely have their intended effect. So the State Department's tour seeks also to ensure that if U.S. troops must oust Haiti's generals and quell their defenders, a second wave of non-Americans is ready to give the peacekeeping and military policing an international stamp.
Whether by invasion or sanctions, what follows the fall of Haiti's military regime is a hellacious task: the rebuilding of a nation from scratch. Even with President Aristide's return, even with the $800 million he has requested from the World Bank and other international lenders, Haiti will begin its reconstruction as an economic, political and in-sti-tu-tion-al disaster. Will a ``Praetorian Guard'' of U.S. troops be needed to protect Aristide from being ousted a second time by Haiti's own army?
The last time U.S. troops imposed the nearest thing to stability, prosperity and responsible governance Haiti has known - between 1915 and 1933 - demonstrated only that their imposition by outsiders doesn't last. But the Clinton administration needn't go back decades to hark that hard lesson, only weeks, as the last U.S. troops left Somalia, no nearer ``stability'' after U.S. intervention than before. by CNB