U.S. Policy on Haiti

* The Times recently carried a lengthy editorial, “Haiti’s Repugnant Clique of Thugs” (Dec. 18), and articles (Dec. 17 and 18) relating the difficulties United States policy has encountered in that country.

The problems created by government “thugs” in Haiti could have been anticipated by any sensible American with a minimal knowledge of that poor country’s sorry history. Any Peace Corps veteran with two years experience in the Caribbean could have given President Clinton better advice than he has received from his professionals on resolving this crisis. There was an enormous Caribbean thunderstorm looming on the horizon, seen by many, but apparently not visible from “Foggy Bottom.” Lawrence Pezzullo, Clinton’s special envoy for working out a solution in Haiti, spent his career largely in Spanish-speaking Latin America.

It was unsettling to read Pezzullo’s comment when the July 3 New York agreement was concluded: “If I were a Haitian I would go out and get drunk today.” The poor Haitian who got drunk based on that accord did so, not in joy, but in despair on realizing that his future was largely being negotiated by naive, well-meaning Americans who had little understanding of the streets of Port-au-Prince.

THOMAS F. LYONS

Santa Barbara

* What was expected has happened. We have given up on Haiti. The butchers have won. Now the cutthroat military and the corrupt elite, successors to “Papa Doc” Duvalier, can run up and down the island with their death squads. No one will stop them. We could have done something about Haiti had we really wanted to. Now the poor and the oppressed can expect affliction to be raised to a new level. And Washington should be warned. Boat people are on the way.

DON RADEMACHER

Los Angeles