Haiti’s Aristide

Jeane Kirkpatrick argues that the United States should not militarily intervene to overthrow the Haitian military government (Column Right, May 22). She offers two reasons. First, she claims that it would violate both the OAS Charter and the U.N. Charter, which prohibits the “use and threat of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” except in self-defense or where there is a serious threat to international peace and security.

The hypocrisy here is almost too much to take. It was Kirkpatrick who repeatedly and vigorously supported the United States’ decade-long attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua--even though the Sandinistas received 60% of the popular vote in a 1984 election. Since there could be no credible argument that the United States was acting in self-defense or that tiny Nicaragua threatened international peace and security, Kirkpatrick’s current analysis of international law unwittingly offers a compelling condemnation of the Reagan and Bush Nicaraguan policy that she supported for 10 years.

Second, Kirkpatrick suggests that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is somehow unfit to serve as president of Haiti (even though he was indisputably elected to the post) because of his “volatile temperament, his refusal to compromise” with the military leaders who overthrew him, and his purported “proclivity for violence.” Given that Aristide was overthrown by a military coup, forced to leave the country at gunpoint, and paramilitary death squads now search out and execute Aristide supporters, it seems a bit odd and unbalanced for Kirkpatrick to express vague concerns about Aristide’s temperament.

JEFFREY B. VALLE

Los Angeles