Sending of Troops to Haiti Criticized

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) asserted Tuesday that the Clinton Administration was sending U.S. troops to Haiti without a clear goal or mission and called it “a prescription for disaster.”

The Administration says it has sent the troops to assist Haiti’s return from military dictatorship to democratic rule. It contends that the U.S. has a vital security interest in seeking stability and preventing a new flood of refugees from the Caribbean nation.

Gallegly, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Administration should instead reinstate the economic sanctions that brought Haitian leaders to the bargaining table last summer.

“We are sending unarmed troops to Haiti as part of a United Nations effort to retrain the thugs in the Haitian military and to build some roads and schools,” Gallegly said in a news release. “It’s safe to say that 175 U.S. troops are not going to reform Haiti’s corrupt and brutal military. . . .

“Do we really need to put more young Americans at risk of being killed or taken hostage in an operation that some State Department bureaucrats think will achieve great things but that our military leaders know is doomed to virtually certain failure?”