Where Angels Fear to Tread

The occupation of Haiti marks a new, hopeful era in U.S. relations with our neighbors in this hemisphere, signaling the birth of the "Clinton Doctrine" under which American power lines up against entrenched economic elites on behalf of truly progressive, democratic forces.

Or...the guns-holstered invasion is simply the latest—albeit more benign—chapter of U.S. intervention in poor, Third World countries in "our backyard," as the colonialist Monroe Doctrine refuses to slide into history’s dustbin.

Both analyses are being bandied about as the occupying forces settle in to the day-to-day task of avoiding nation-building on the streets of Haiti. Which spin is more correct won’t be known until the unintended consequences have a chance to run their course and the revisionists finish their work.

Given the history of U.S. military, economic, and political involvement in countries far and wide over the last century, it’s easy to understand those who are suspicious of American motives in this case. The U.S. government’s lukewarm-at-best support for Haitian democracy over the past three years—from halfhearted sanctions to the permitting of CIA- and State Department-sponsored smears of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide—is enough to give one pause about the sincerity of purpose in the negotiated invasion.

But even with that checkered history, there’s a clear, qualitative difference between a guns-a’blazin’ vanquishing of a hostile foe and what is emerging as a massive police operation. "I didn’t come here to be a cop," a U.S. Army sergeant told a reporter. That may not have been the initial intention, but it’s the on-the-ground reality, and there are worse jobs they could be doing. Ask the Iraqi people.

BUT THE RECENT history of American troops playing the role of world cop is a mixed one at best. Choose a historical antecedent and draw your own lessons: the "police actions" in Vietnam and Korea or the attempts at nation-building in Somalia or post-World War II Japan. All of them share a theme: If you want to intervene in a people’s history, you’d better prepare to be there for the long haul, and you’d better understand a little of what you’re getting yourself into.

Neither of those conditions seems to be met in Haiti, about whose history most Americans are fairly ignorant. Much of the recent media coverage has oversimplified the stratification of Haitian society. The too-familiar gulf between rich and poor, be-tween those with power and those without, has been clearly reported. But less has been said about the vast divide between the two ingredients that make up Haiti’s cultural stew.

Haiti’s urban elite are French-speaking descendants of free mulattos, in positions of power and wealth since the colonial era two centuries ago. The rural peasants, 95 percent of the population, sprang forth from African slaves, and their culture is rooted in the Africa-oriented Vodoun (or "Voodoo") faith—Haiti, it is said, is "90 percent Catholic and 100 percent Vodoun." But Vodoun is not the macabre black magic cult of "voodoo dolls" and zombies that many Americans imagine. Rather, like any religion, it embodies a complex intertwining of the mystical and the mundane, and contains an Africa-rooted worldview expressed in a distinct language, culture, and set of social mores.

While much of the support for Aristide, a Catholic priest, is rooted in the Vodoun culture, he’ll have to deal with the reality that Vodoun leaders and structure have also been the base of the Duvalier dictatorships and still are the foundation of the Ton-Ton Macoute, the paramilitary thugs who have served as enforcers for the ruling elites. Anthropologist Wade Davis, author of two books on Haiti, says that over the last 30 years the Vodoun society has become completely entwined with the political power of the Haitian state.

That entanglement will make difficult Aristide’s attempts to govern in whatever months he has in office. But it also stands as a warning to the American occupiers if they act out of ignorance of that political-religious-cultural history. Press reports in the first few weeks of the occupation bragging that U.S. Marine Special Forces "know the people" because they speak French are not encouraging.

HAITI’S HISTORY over the last century provides a case study of the violent repression of a small, weak nation for the economic benefit of the ruling class within and larger nations without (read: the United States). The people there have had to suffer decades of dictatorship—for what reason? So our national pastime, may it rest in peace, may be kept supplied in hand-stitched baseballs? Do the managers of Spaulding or Wilson think twice about those who produce their baseballs, most of them now in the Dominican Republic because of "unstable" conditions in Haiti?

U.S.-based corporations in virtually every industry manage similar oppression around the globe, producing not only baseballs or running shoes but the seeds of social unrest as well. If the conditions aren’t addressed now, if economic democracy isn’t seen as a legitimate objective before an eruption of violence in the form of revolution or repression, then Haiti-style invasions will by necessity become a matter of course—with little hope that the next one won’t yield rivers of blood in the course of making it so.

One of the most perilous long-term consequences of the Haiti occupation is to make the world—or at least this hemisphere—safe for intervention. Upon what moral ground will the "opposition" stand when next a president, for whatever mix of motives, readies an invasion force? Let’s face it: If we have no principled resistance to the use of military force in support of objectives or causes or leaders we like, we’ll be hard pressed to make a moral argument against the next use of force we don’t like.

Frustration over the world’s petty despots and ruthless autocrats will continue to prompt a desire to do something. The United Nations still lacks the power to enforce international law effectively, and removing its Cold War shackles has merely made it easier for the United States to run the show. Until that’s rectified, the Hobson’s choice will often seem to be between massive violence and inaction. Our task continues to be one of broadening that choice.