O.C. Congressmen Not Moved by Clinton’s Haiti Speech

It remains to be seen whether President Clinton’s emotional speech Thursday night convinced the American people that an invasion of Haiti is justified, but it was immediately clear that Orange County’s conservative delegation would not be swayed.

“He still looks like a small man in a big office and an illegitimate President,” said Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), moments after watching Clinton make his case for an invasion.

So convinced are Orange County congressmen that Clinton’s Haiti strategy is wrong-headed that several who were asked to respond to the televised address had their remarks prepared hours before the cameras even rolled.

“The President is going to mobilize and send over 20,000 U.S. troops to Haiti . . . spill American and Haitian blood, spending over a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money in the process, just to install and, in effect, bodyguard an anti-American leader of questionable stability,” Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) said in a statement prepared early Thursday.

Clinton contends that an invasion is the only way to dislodge the military junta that overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Sept. 30, 1991--just months after he became the first democratically elected leader in Haiti’s history.

Military dictators have since imposed “a reign of terror,” the President said, citing the execution of children, the rape of women and human rights atrocities that have sent waves of desperate Haitians fleeing to the United States for refuge.

But Dornan called the atrocities outlined by Clinton “total and absolute propaganda.” And Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) said that even if true, they were hardly just cause for military action.

“There are atrocities going on all over the world,” Rohrabacher said after hearing Clinton’s remarks. “If human rights abuses were legitimate grounds for invading another country, we would be invading half the world.”

Seldom has a cry for freedom and democracy gone unembraced by Orange County conservatives. But not this time. Although Aristide was Haiti’s first democratically elected leader, the congressmen said he proved himself a brutal thug and an anti-American who once likened the United States to Satan.

“He ordered ‘necklacing’ for the guy who finished second in the democratic election,” charged Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), referring to the act of burning one’s political rivals to death with a gasoline-filled tire placed around the neck. “It’s very difficult to call that democratic behavior.”

Citing indications that the regime might step aside for new elections, Cox said a wiser course would be to lift the embargo in exchange for “scheduling elections forthwith.”

Haiti, the congressmen agreed, is “not worth one drop of American blood.”

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside) quoted a letter from a constituent with a son in the armed forces: “Show me one piece of rationale that I can lay at my son’s grave or carve on his tombstone. Then and only then will I sleep at night with the comfort that a supreme sacrifice could be justified.”

Although Rohrabacher does not believe the President succeeded in convincing Americans or Congress that an invasion is right, he said Haitian dictators should heed Clinton’s message that their time is up.

“They have got to know that when a President of the United States goes on nationwide television and talks tough, he can’t weasel out of it,” he said.