LAST WEEKEND, Haiti saw its embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first elected head of state in th ecountry, resign and fly off into exile in the Central African republic. Haiti has recently been the scene of an intense and violent rebel insurgency whose sole aim is to oust Aristide from power. With the exit of Aristide, President Bush has upped the contingent of Marines sent to Haiti for peacekeeping purposes to 100. According to CNN, France and Canada have also sent troops, and the United Nations has approved the use of peacekeeping forces due to the crisis.
While the last few days have seen the Haitian situation change rapidly, the rebel bitterness and insurgency havebeen on the rise for the past few weeks. Several members of Congress have begun to criticize President Bush for not having acted sooner to attempt to stymie the emergency and loss of life. Because of recent past experience, and due to the development of the situation, President Bush acted adequately in his decision to send troops to Haiti.
During his term, the international community and several critics within the American government have accused President Bush of acting as a warmonger and a world policeman. As several of Bush's military objectives such as the current insurgent states of Iraq and Afghanistan and the failure to apprehend Osama Bin Laden have shown, sometimes brute military force is not always the answer to complex world issues. Although the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were justified as being necessary for the internal safety of the United States, the situation in Haiti is not an American problem.
Although the recent events in Haiti are tragic and have constituted a grave humanitarian catastrophe, the citizens of Haiti ultimately understand and fuel the current crisis. Since the democratically elected president of Haiti is responsible for the internal security of his nation, he should be allowed to exercise his authority and control his country.
It should not be the role of the United States to make or enforce the decisions made by the heads of states of other nations, unless the United States is asked or invited to do so. Moral justification for peacekeeping military force should come as a result of complete anarchy in a country, or by the demonstrated danger to a country's citizens of a head of state who is committing crimes against humanity. While the situation in Haiti has been calamitous and very deadly in the past few weeks, it has not comprised these aforementioned moral grounds for intervention.
If Bush had decided to send in more peacekeeping forces earlier in the conflict, they would not have made much of an impact. The goal of the Haitian rebels was to get rid of Aristide. Unfortunately, they went about affecting this goal in a violent fashion. Even though American troops would have represented a formidable force in Haiti, it is difficult to understand how they possibly could have formed a barrier to keep two disparate and decentralized feuding forces away from each other in what was a near civil war that engulfed much of the country. The rebels and the pro-Aristide forces would have undoubtedly continued to fight regardless of any American human shields in their way.
In all probability, deploying American forces would have resulted in nothing more than American army casualties on top of the horrendous Haitian body count. Furthermore, sending in peacekeeping troops would have placed the United States in the precarious position of having to support either the rebel forces, or President Aristide, a virtual dictator who has used violence himself as a means of staying in power.
The crisis in Haiti was not an American problem but rather a human predicament. Humanitarian crises should be the responsibility of the world community which is embodied by the United Nations. It should thus not be President Bush but rather the U.N. Security Council who should be criticized for not having sent in peacekeeping forces earlier.
Throughout this crisis, President Bush has surprisingly proven a newfound restraint in world affairs. Rather than acting as a "world policeman" on supposed higher moral ground, Bush sent in troops initially to protect American assets such as the embassy, and only committed more troops when their prescience would be truly needed and effective after Aristide left Haiti.
Alex Rosemblat can be reached at arosemblat@cavalierdaily.com.
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