Longtime Haiti watcher Raymond Joseph lays the blame with President Clinton:
Reading the lead editorial of the New York Times yesterday, one is left with the impression that Mr. Bush is to blame for the mess in Haiti and for “whisking its democratically elected president” off to Africa…. “After intervening to restore Mr. Aristide, the first democratically elected president in Haitian history, to office in 1994,” wrote the Times, “Washington failed to do enough to help develop strong institutions, like an independent police force and judiciary, to sustain democratic rule.”
I have the distinct impression that it was President Clinton, egged on by the Black Congressional Caucus, who deployed some 23,000 troops in September 1994 to prepare the way for the return of Mr. Aristide on October 15. For the next six years, Mr. Clinton coddled Mr. Aristide….
It is disingenuous for the Times to pin the failure of the Haitian “democratic experiment” on Mr. Bush. In our editorials in the Haiti-Observateur, we warned Mr. Clinton about the awful signals he was sending to freedom-loving Haitians who became targets of harassment, intimidation, and even assassination by the “restored democrat” Aristide. [NYSun]