As I stepped outside of the moldy airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a proverbial deluge of poverty-stricken children mobbed me and my family. The distance from the decaying lobby hall of Port-au-Prince International Airport was a mere matter of feet and yet I was instantly swarmed by eight year-olds, each offering menial services, such as carrying my carry-on bag, as barter for change. It was August of 1996 -- the onset of the first and most salient of my three trips to Haiti. At the time I was a 14-year-old, long-haired (alternative phase) adolescent, traveling with his two siblings and parents, both of whom are physicians, as we followed what can best be described as a medical and humanitarian vocation.
Haiti in 1996, although hard to imagine, was much safer than the politically uprooted Haiti of today. A year and a half before my family departed on its medical mission, President Clinton had ordered 20,000 U.S. troops to the half-island country, in the process accomplishing three objectives: ending the brutal military dictatorships that had forced a mass exodus of Haitians to neighboring states, restoring President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power and limiting illegal Haitian immigration into Florida communities. Yet even with the brief window of political stability afforded to Haitians following Clinton's successful intervention, the country continued to be plagued by a porous economy, a decrepit infrastructure, insufferable poverty and, most injuriously, a burgeoning AIDS epidemic. Haiti was, and continues to be, a dismal panorama of humanity's unfortunate sons and daughters.
Nonetheless the memories I have from that trip in 1996 were almost all of a positive nature. Haitians, even with the unfortunate, sickly cruel hand that they have been dealt (I'm referring of course to the socioeconomic paralysis that comes with being born Haitian), are uniquely upbeat people. And while my time at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in the small inland village of Deschappelles was devoted mainly to emptying out old Pepto-Bismol bottles for pharmaceutical storage use, I still managed to leave the island convinced America could do more to end the desolation in its own backyard.
In stark contrast, contemporary Haiti is a country torn by gun violence, warring political factions, and a police force so inadequate that President Aristide recently admitted the government was out-armed by rebel insurgents. With these rebels gathering on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince (Haiti's capital), the possibility of a deadly confrontation seems more and more likely. "Should those killers come to Port-au-Prince," Aristide stated at a news conference, "you may have thousands of people who may be killed."
As opponents to Aristide (not to be confused with the insurgents) mull over a U.S. supported peace proposal -- a proposal that would require Aristide to institute a new government and share his prime ministership with an appointed official -- Haitians wait on the international community to intervene constructively. Yet even with ominous homicide looming in the future, the Bush administration steadfastly rejects any strategy that would commit a large number of U.S troops to a peacekeeping mission. This is truly unfortunate. Just as I felt in the late summer of 1996, America is shamefully turning a blind eye on Haiti's sociopolitical quandaries.
As Clinton demonstrated in 1994 -- and even as Bush showed with his late-stage intervention in Liberia in 2003 -- peacekeeping missions can work. Surely, with Bush's doctrine of preemption now claimed as conceptually and politically practical, deployment of U.S. troops to obstruct humanitarian disaster is just as reasonable as preempting potential security threats. U.S. officials should send troops to Port-au-Prince immediately, if not to make sure that political differences are settled without horrific loss of life, then to demonstrate that the U.S. firmly stands behind the expansion of peace and democracy.
The country of Haiti, on whose shores Christopher Columbus legendarily landed and whose citizens were the first to break the bonds of slavery, now is the Western Hemisphere's most destitute nation. With no economy to speak of, and social mobility merely folklore, Haitians have gravitated toward the canals of political ferocity.
The international community, led by Haiti's prosperous neighbor to the north, cannot wait any longer as peace proposals are considered and innocent lives are lost. We must send troops to Haiti in the hope of impeding this emerging political calamity.