NO ONE COULD ACCUSE BILL CLINTON OF FAILING TO give peace a chance. Even as American warships reached their invasion stations off the shores of Haiti, and the President faced the moment when he would have to issue the order for U.S. troops to go in shooting, a tense weekend of negotiations was devoted to the possibility that strongman Raoul Cedras and the rest of the ruling Haitian military clique had finally got the message and were ready to quit. At the 11th hour, the President proved willing to talk.
At week's end the outcome of those negotiations was still less than clear. But in a crucial sense, the conditions of the ruling gang's departure would not make much difference. One way or another, under fire or in a friendly takeover, with Cedras in power or in exile, American troops were on their way in. Sweeping aside the Haitian army was the least difficult, least important part of their mission. Ahead loomed the far tougher job of imposing and keeping order in a country ripe for mayhem, then laying the ground for a self- sustaining democracy to take root in a land that for centuries has known + little but grinding poverty and bloody dictatorship.
Ahead as well lay the uncertain prospect of American casualties -- losses that could further envenom what was already a passionate post-cold war debate. The verbal battle over invasion was at bottom a difference of opinion over whether Haiti was worth any American deaths at all, whether they occurred during an invasion or in an attempt to police an unruly and often violent country. It also touched on a perennial national anxiety: when and under what circumstances the U.S. should ever use military force abroad.
Just when it seemed that Clinton had finally, after so many false alarms, determined to invade, he seized a startling penultimate chance to talk the junta out. He had just finished his TV address to the nation Thursday night, explaining why he was on the verge of ordering a Haiti invasion -- because there seemed to be no other way to force that nation's brutal military dictators into yielding power. Only minutes after the cameras stopped rolling in the Oval Office, the President sat down with Vice President Al Gore, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake. They shared a secret that only three or four other people in the entire government were aware of: there might, after all, be one more chance to resolve the crisis diplomatically.
The group talked for a few minutes and then started making phone calls. To whom? To an unlikely trio indeed: former President Jimmy Carter, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, and Senate Armed Services chairman Sam Nunn. The urgent conversations went on until Friday afternoon. By then the last U.S. warships in a 23-vessel armada were nearing their battle stations off Haiti, and Pentagon briefers were telling reporters that American forces would be ready to begin the invasion anytime after dark Sunday.