Gulp. It is not an easy thing for a Democrat to contemplate the use of power; postponing it until next week is always better. But, to Bill Clinton’s credit, he did the right thing. It’s even vaguely possible, if the president proceeds steadfastly, that his bizarre Caribbean adventure will not prove cataclysmic. The Haitian army may be disarmed and the police restrained. The junta may resign. Aristide may return (he may even be a reasonable democrat). The extremists on both sides may choose not to shoot, beat and necklace each other. American troops may escape the cross-fire; they may leave before the millennium. But don’t bet the farm.
Even if it does work, Bill Clinton has done massive, perhaps irreparable, damage to his presidency, to his party–and, worse, to America’s status in the world. His jittery performance seems a vindication of the perennial Republican canard about how Democrats act in office: they either launch the country frivolously into war or act cravenly, undermining American power. It’s always Vietnam or Munich, quagmire or capitulation. Indeed, Clinton has proved the accusation insufficiently creative: he has combined the two, capitulating into a quagmire. And he has done this with an all-star cast–a timid secretary of state; an invisible, moralizing national-security adviser; an ignored, technocratic secretary of defense … and, to top it off, Jimmy Carter, Prince of Peace. The stray details of the operation are a profound American embarrassment: the helpless secretary of state and his deputy, Strobe Talbott, going off to see the movie “Quiz Show” on Saturday afternoon, as Carter negotiated in Haiti; Carter, telling the Haitians he was “ashamed” of this country’s policy; Carter, ignoring the demand that Cedras leave the country because it would be a violation of the dictator’s human rights. Who could invent such stuff?
“None of this would be happening,” a Republican quipped, “if Warren Christopher were still alive.” Which is only partly true. Christopher did detach himself from Haiti policy – in silent protest, apparently–from the very start; and he did, reportedly. oppose the Carter mission. But he is, even when not inert, a Democrat–and prone to the party’s peculiar proclivities. “Republicans make many of the same mistakes, but they manage to hide it better,” said Leslie H. Gelb, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “They couch it better. Democrats talk about principle; Republicans, about hardheaded national interests. Democrats want to work things out with their adversaries; Republicans reduce everything to raw considerations of power.”
It is true, Republicans screw up, too. Nixon compounded the ignominy in Vietnam. Reagan put marines into Beirut on an ill-conceived mission that ended disastrously. But Reagan also understood–as most Democrats never did–that raw power, as symbolized by the introduction of Pershing missiles in Europe (and the threat of Star Wars, for that matter), might push the Russians past the breaking point in the cold war. The Republican foreign-policy grammar is simply more plausible than the Democrats’: the protection of national interests seems a lot more solid than the promulgation of national principles, however worthy.
Moreover, there is a fatal, effete high-mindedness in the Democrats’ method. It is a two-step prescription for paralysis, perfected by Jimmy Carter. First, a principle is formulated: America should act to expand democracy, to stand up for human rights, to root out thugs. But step two, the all-purpose application of empathy, inevitably negates step one: we must try to understand evil rather than condemn it. There are root causes. Society produces a Cedras (just as it produces our own street thugs). Redemption is always possible. Thugs can evolve. Raoul, is there something you want to share with us? In this case, Carter’s ladling of empathy served to create an embarrassing step three: a questioning of Bill Clinton’s initial motives. If Cedras were “honorable” enough–Powell’s word–to adhere to this agreement, maybe Clinton was motivated by domestic politics to overstate the case against the thugs.
One wonders about Clinton. “There is no instinct for power,” says a disgusted administration official. “Policy discussions are conducted on a level of abstraction entirely disconnected from real experience. There is an operational incompetence that is profound and intractable. Nor do many of these people [in the inner circle] have practical political experience. None of them has ever run for sheriff.” It gets worse. On the day after Jimmy Carter publicly denigrated the Clinton Haiti policy–and after Carter, remarkably, boasted to The New York Times that he lobbied foreign leaders to oppose the United States position on the gulf war–the State Department smiled on the peanut farmer’s pending efforts to solve … Korea. “He is a unique asset,” said Assistant Secretary Robert Gallucci. The mind reels.
