This Time We Mean Business

By Kevin Fedarko

Normally, senior aides to Bill Clinton do not speak with frankness about the roles, missions and vital interests at stake in Haiti. But last week they were all eagerly making themselves available to deliver one message: that, as an official put it, "there comes a point where it has to be clear that the U.S. means what it says."

The word has not yet got through to Port-au-Prince. Haiti's military junta called its supporters into the streets for what has become a familiar ritual of taunting the U.S. While onlookers sipped rum, 3,000 demonstrators screamed slogans into the microphones of foreign television crews and painted voodoo hexes on the crosswalk to hobble U.S. invaders when they arrive. As an expression of the diplomacy-of-defiance that constitutes Haiti's foreign policy, it provided a crude but telling glimpse of what Lieut. General Raoul Cedras thinks of Clinton's threats to topple him and his henchmen.

For weeks it has seemed that Cedras' contempt for the U.S. was matched only by the Clinton Administration's ambivalence over whether the Haitian leader could be shoved from power by force of argument or force of arms. Last week senior Administration officials staked out policy positions far in front of a President who has not yet made up his mind. "One way or another, the de facto government is going to be leaving," declared Secretary of State Warren Christopher. "Their days are definitely numbered."

From the corridors of the White House to the State Department to the Pentagon, officials insisted the debate was no longer about whether the U.S. would "forcibly enter" Haiti, but how and when. The flurry of highly public military preparations, said a White House official, "means we're going into an operational stage." When pressed, all these officials admitted Clinton had not set a date for invasion -- although Sept. 20, according to sources in the Pentagon, is looming as a likely deadline. "If the President doesn't invade," said another official, "he's going to be hurting. There's a sense of inevitability that it's going to happen."

To make that message convincing, the White House team moved on a broader, bolder front than ever before. Just after Clinton returned from his 12-day vacation on Martha's Vineyard, he sat down to discuss Haiti with his senior foreign-policy advisers. While the President gave no final go-ahead, the issues on the table boiled down to tactics: how to handle Congress; whether to set a public deadline for invasion; and who -- if anyone -- should be sent to deliver to the Haitian government a "drop-dead date" by which it must step down or be kicked out.

In part, the highly visible and carefully choreographed mobilization is designed to make the threat of invasion so real that the real invasion will not be necessary. Its assertive rhetoric notwithstanding, the White House still fervently hopes the junta will believe the warnings and voluntarily call it quits. Late last week some Administration officials suggested that Cedras and his cronies may finally be realizing the seriousness of their predicament. Asked to describe evidence for this, a White House aide refused to elaborate but hinted that recent intelligence reports indicated a shift in tone among the Haitian leaders based on "how they are talking among themselves." In Port-au-Prince, a Haitian political analyst scoffed at the idea. "There has been too much bluffing, too many mixed signals in the history of this crisis," he said, "to believe the Clinton Administration is really serious about ending this."

While the beating of war drums is intended to intimidate Haiti's leaders, it is also meant to prepare the two groups Clinton must enlist before sending U.S. troops into battle: Congress and the American people. To convince the country that returning Aristide to power is worth spilling American blood, advisers told Clinton he needs to spell out the U.S. vital interests at stake, preferably in a TV speech this week.

A top official laid out four basic points Clinton would make. First, he would stress -- without a trace of irony -- that the U.S. must follow through on its repeated public threats of invasion to preserve "American credibility." Second, Clinton would lay out human-rights abuses in Haiti. "Bodies are found every day in gullies," said the official. The President will make it clear that "there is a different standard for savagery next door than brutality on the other side of town."

Then Clinton would explain that he has exhausted all peaceful means of resolving the conflict. The U.S. has tried -- and failed -- to dislodge the junta through negotiations and through economic sanctions whose effect on the Haitian poor now borders "on cruelty." Finally, the official said, the President would argue that the U.S. can no longer accept a situation in Haiti & that contributes to the disastrous explosion of refugees from the Caribbean.

While Clinton realizes he needs to court public support, he does not intend to seek explicit congressional approval. Lawmakers do not seem sufficiently united to block an invasion, but Republicans can be counted on to criticize the President. They are already charging that an invasion is just a political stunt timed to boost the Democrats' sagging electoral fortunes. In fact what most Congressmen really want, says a Capitol Hill staff member, "is to be consulted, but let Clinton take the heat." Beginning Monday, the Administration's national-security officials will launch a sortie on Capitol Hill to brief key lawmakers.

The Defense Department scrambled all week to position the military for action. In Puerto Rico, troops began warm-up maneuvers. Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch ordered seven huge cargo ships out of mothballs; a day later, he activated five more supply vessels. They are expected to set sail this week to transport weapons and materiel for the Army's 10th Mountain Division, which will play a key part in the postinvasion peacekeeping force. On Friday, Pentagon officials said that the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower will pull into its berth in Norfolk, Virginia, this week and begin replacing its planes with 70 helicopters, which can more easily land troops in Haiti. By late this week, the Ike and the U.S.S. Mount Whitney, which will serve as the invasion's command vessel, will leave for the Caribbean. Both ships should be in place by early next week.

Although the Pentagon has long insisted its troops would meet little resistance from the 7,000-man Haitian army, spokesmen indicated the total invasion force will probably consist of 20,000 U.S. troops, an overwhelming force intended to minimize casualties. Nearly half would be slated for peacekeeping, once returning President Jean-Bertrand Aristide settles in. Only about 13,000 are expected to actually invade Haiti, led by 1,800 Marines, who will storm Port-au-Prince to secure the airport and the U.S. embassy and then await reinforcements. The entire operation will be commanded by Admiral Paul D. Miller, a hard-charging, innovative officer. While Miller says he is "ready for whatever mission we're given," he concedes that it will not be "a one-day problem."

For that reason, Administration officials are at pains to lay out their plans for the days after the initial attack. As tensions heightened, William Gray III, Clinton's special envoy on Haiti, brought General John Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, together with Aristide for a 90-minute meeting on Tuesday, when details of the invasion were discussed. The U.S. also began enlisting Haitian refugees from Guantanamo to participate in an interim police force that would step in to replace the Haitian army and restore order. A token force of about 300 troops from eight Caribbean nations would then join a larger international peacekeeping force that would quickly replace U.S. units and train a permanent new Haitian security force. "The military mission is to restore democratic processes," says a senior U.S. official. "But we're not going in there to do nation building. This is not a 20-year exercise."

In the end, it may no longer matter whether Clinton succeeds this week in persuading Americans to support him in his venture. For better or worse, the President has drawn a line from which he can no longer retreat, and which points inexorably toward war. There is now only one person who can change that: Raoul Cedras.

With reporting by Sam Allis and Bernard Diederich/Port-au-Prince and Michael Duffy, J.F.O. McAllister and Mark Thompson/Washington