Plunging into Haiti: Clinton, Aristide, and the Defeat of Diplomacy

EPILOGUE. History Repeats Itself

271 History Repeats Itself “If this is a triumph, it is difficult to imagine what a failure would look like.” — M A R K FA L C O F F of the American Institute in his evaluation of Operation Restore Democracy Approximately three years after he was ousted from power, President Jean Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti. On October 15, 1994, as thousands of Haitians jammed the streets around the Presidential Palace, President Aristide alighted from a U.S. helicopter, greeted gathered dignitaries including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and acting prime minister Robert Malval, entered a bulletproof enclosure, and addressed his people with: “Today is the day when the sunshine of democracy rises forever!” A little less than ten years later, on February 29, 2004, he was once again forced into exile. Instead of political reconciliation, the growth of democracy, and economic stability, Aristide and his tight circle of cronies delivered political arrests and assassinations, rigged elections, and corruption. The more than three billion dollars the U.S. Government expended on the military occupation and the hundreds of millions invested by the United States and its international partners to rebuild EPILOGUE 2 72 EPILOGUE democratic institutions had largely been spent in vain. Robert Malval, Haitian legislators from both sides of the aisle, and U.S. and UN diplomats who had labored hard throughout 1993 and 1994 all agreed that none of the long-term goals of Haitians, the United States, or the international community had been met. “We raised so much hope and made so much progress in terms of building political consensus in Haiti and international cooperation,” UN diplomat Leandro Despouy said in 2004. “But by returning Aristide to power on his terms only, the whole thing went down the drain.”1 ...