It Could Be Our Finest Hour : Freeing Haiti would be true to our ideals--but only if we ensure that democracy thrives.

It would be the nation’s finest hour since the 1948 Berlin airlift. It would redeem the foreign military assistance received by the United States essential to throwing off the British yoke. And it would fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s noble inaugural pledge to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty.” It is President Bill Clinton’s impending overthrow of Haiti’s military thugs.

As Thomas Jefferson eloquently wrote in the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln amplified in the Gettysburg Address, the moral spine of the United States is a devotion to fundamental human rights secured by the rule of law. Our citizens enjoy a first call on that devotion, but its glory is universal and ageless.

Seeking through military force to bring the exhilarating benefits of democracy and democratic freedoms to peoples in foreign lands revitalizes our own democratic convictions and instills inestimable national pride. What other nation has ever risked lives but for parochial, narrow and self-interested motives?

A Haitian invasion to oust the incumbent despots would not be worth the candle, however, unless the United States contemplates a military occupation until institutions of democracy and liberty are entrenched. It is morally unjustifiable for a single American soldier to die in the name of replacing a Hitler with a Stalin. That means the objective of the invasion must be more than the reinstatement of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose devotion to freedom and the rule of law are suspect.

Aristide was popularly elected, but that is an insufficient credential of legitimacy. Adolf Hitler also catapulted to office with a plurality of German votes. Tyranny by the majority is tyranny nonetheless, a teaching that Aristide seems to scorn.

A military occupation force similar to those in West Germany and Japan following World War II should thus be installed in Haiti indefinitely after the invasion. Military law should prevail for two to three years while preparations are made for elections to a constitutional assembly empowered to draft a new constitution that enshrines principles of self-government and individual liberty. The United States would hold a veto power over any draft; a proposed constitution found acceptable would be subject to popular ratification.

Such a military occupation plan is not visionary. It proved wildly successful in West Germany and Japan despite the absence of history or political culture conducive to the inauguration of democracy. To a lesser extent, the United States military more recently secured democracy in Grenada and Panama.

On the other hand, to reject a military occupation force virtually guarantees a continuation of tyranny and lawlessness in Haiti with a change only in victim identities. A page of history is worth volumes of logic on that score.

The United States assisted the forcible ouster of communist, socialist or right-wing despots in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980) and Afghanistan (1989), but was heedless of the aftermaths. All quickly succumbed to tyrannies equal to or worse than those displaced.

The moral imperative for invading Haiti and installing a democratic regime is emphatically not a sufficient justification, standing alone, for action. Communist China, Cuba and other tyrannies worse than Haiti’s abound, yet their invasions would not be justified because the risk of sizable American casualties would be too great. But in Haiti that risk is nil. Our casualties would probably be comparable to those incurred in military training exercises based on the Persian Gulf War experience.

The United States, moreover, would directly benefit from a Haiti invasion and the installment of democracy. The enmities centered in Florida over would-be Haitian immigrants would subside or cease. In addition, the international credibility of the United States is at stake. If Clinton backs down from his invasion threat, other vicious regimes ranging from Libya to Iraq to North Korea are certain to remain intransigent. The world will become more safe for dictators but less safe for democrats.

Foreign policy guided solely by morality is rashness. But foreign policy will degenerate into soullessness if morality is not given at least a leading role.