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The argument for invading Haiti seems fairly simple. The actions of its rulers -- a junta which deposed an elected president -- have resulted in an invasion of the United States. It is a fundamental obligation of any government to protect its people and territory from invaders.
Granted, this is not a military invasion resulting from palatial orders.
But it's still an invasion, and it still results from the actions of the rules of Haiti. If an American intervention in Haiti results in a change of government there, so that Haitians cease to flow into the United States and take resources from U.S. citizens, then how could anyone reasonably argue against military action?
Well, there's the matter of strategic interest. Unlike Panama, Haiti doesn't have a canal, and its ruling elite, unlike Gen. Manuel Noriega, has not been indicted in the United States for drug-running (though it should be noted that, according to the DEA, more drugs flow through Panama now than before Operation Just Cause).
Nor does Haiti have a herd of American students who couldn't get into domestic medical schools, but still want to make $250,000 a year and become Reaganites. Thus Haiti lacks whatever strategic importance that Grenada possessed.
There's no oil in Haiti, so it's not like Kuwait, where
it was a vital strategic interest for the United States to
restore a feudal oligarchy and rid the world of the menace
Saddam Worse than Hitler
Hussein.
All Haiti has to offer is cheap labor, and the rest of the world offers an abundant supply of that. If an earthquake sent that end of the island down to join the Lost Continent of Atlantis, the major effect on U.S. strategic interests would be that our Navy would have to revise its navigation charts.
Even so, Haiti is valuable as a demonstration that both major parties are about as consistent as Colorado weather.
Many of the Republicans who argue that there is no U.S. strategic interest in Haiti are the same folks who argued that it was our patriotic duty to support Richard Nixon as he continued to dispatch young Americans to death in Vietnam.
If Haiti, near our shores, is of no strategic interest to the United States, then how was Vietnam, 8,000 miles away? Further, Vietnam fell to the Communists 20 years ago. Did U.S. strategic interests thereby suffer? Did the Soviet Union somehow win the Cold War when we weren't looking?
And now a Democratic president offers the same argument
that Republican apologists (many of whom fancied themselves
strict constructionists
) made during the days of
Reagan and Bush: despite what the Constitution says about
Congress having the sole power to declare war, it doesn't
really mean that if you call a war a police
action.
But the real reason there's so much apprehension about invading Haiti is that everyone fears that American troops will get stuck in the jungle. The last time the Marines stormed ashore there was 1915, and they stayed until 1934.
For an imperial nation, America is an inept colonial power. The British, who were honest about their imperial ambitions during the Victorian era, maintained schools of colonial administration so that skilled bureaucrats could be dispatched to run railroads and post offices in India or South Africa.
We like to pretend that we don't indulge in that sort of thing, and so, while we maintain a military that can strike anywhere, we don't have any system for administering conquered territories.
If we want to keep the turf gained by our soldiers, as with the spoils of the Mexican War, we integrate it into the nation.
Otherwise, we have a sorry record: suppressing democratic efforts in the Philippines, driving Cuba and Nicaragua into Marxist alliances because we exercised control through brutal satraps, pushing Iran into the arms of religious fanatics after we kept propping up the Shah.
This demonstrates that the United States has no business invading Haiti unless we've got some idea of what to do with it after its 7,000 soldiers surrender.
We don't. And we never will, until we're honest enough to establish a Department of Colonial Administration along with schools to train Americans in operating postal systems, railroads, highway networks, broadcasting ministries and the other ingredients of imperial hegemony.
So here's my solution. We forget invasion.
Every arriving Cuban or Haitian refugee will be issued an M-16, a grenade launcher and appropriate munitions. A week or two of training at Guatanamo should suffice.
Then the refugees will be returned with the tools to change their homelands, and they will be grateful to the United States -- the world's leading arms merchant -- for providing them with this opportunity.
It's much the same strategy as we followed in Afghanistan -- arm the people so that they can pursue their goals, and otherwise stay out of it.
That strategy apparently worked, because I haven't read a word about Afghanistan for months, and I'm getting sick of Haiti.
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