Why Reward These Thugs? : Payoff to Cedras is a blot on American honor

The United States is currently detaining scores of Haitians suspected of committing unspecified crimes under the three-year-long military dictatorship. Meanwhile, the biggest crooks of all, led by Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, have been allowed to leave Haiti with a planeload of possessions to help assure their comfort in exile.

That U.S.-guaranteed safe departure was no surprise. Washington has for some time embraced the idea. As President Clinton repeated at Friday’s White House ceremony for returning Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, there should be no “revenge or retribution” after the end of Haiti’s latest despotism. What does come as a shock--what comes as something of a national humiliation--was the extraordinarily generous and wholly unnecessary severance package that Cedras was able to squeeze out of the United States just before he slunk off to Panama.

Over the next year the United States will provide for the transportation, care and feeding of Cedras, his family, his chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Philippe Biamby, and 23 members of Cedras’ clan who were allowed to enter the United States this week. At the same time, the United States has unfrozen at least $79 million that hundreds of Haitian army officers and backers of Cedras have on deposit in U.S. banks. Further, the U.S. government will lease, at a cost of some tens of thousands of dollars a year, three homes belonging to Cedras and his mother.

Why these apparently late concessions demanded by Cedras were even seriously considered, let alone granted, is baffling. With Haiti firmly under U.S. military control, with many of the goons who supported Cedras either disarmed or in hiding, the deposed dictator had no cards left to play. Washington had already promised Cedras that he wouldn’t have to face the wrath of his fellow citizens. The right response to his outrageous demands should simply have been to hustle him aboard the plane waiting to fly him into exile.

For years, Cedras, his cronies and supporters sucked millions out of Haiti’s desperately poor economy. At least some of the ruling clique are suspected of being deeply involved in the international drug trade. This was a regime lacking wholly in political legitimacy and utterly without mercy in enforcing its will. It was a regime that raped and pillaged Haiti, and yet in the end it demanded--and won--the right to depart with “dignity.”

Anthony Lake, Clinton’s national-security adviser, calls the deal that led to Cedras’ departure a success, and says there’s nothing to be apologetic about. Yes, there is. It’s called the moral honor of the United States, and today it’s looking pretty bedraggled.