Ask the Haitians.

• Position: U.S. military intervention - Editorial

Gradually but inexorably, the pressure is building for U.S. military intervention in Haiti.

It comes from such influential members of Congress as Representative David Obey, Wisconsin Democrat, a leading light of the House establishment, who says: "As long as I've been old enough to read and breathe, I've opposed military intervention by the United States in this Hemisphere. But I feel Haiti is a special circumstance."

It comes from liberals like Anthony Lewis, the respected columnist for The New York Times, who believes the time has come to use force to reinstate Haiti's duly elected and immensely popular president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to the office from which he was ousted by a savage military coup in 1991. It comes from conservatives like William Safire, also of The New York Times, who would dispatch an armed force of Haitian refugees, backed by a U.S. aircraft carrier "loaded with helicopter gunships," as well as other other U.S. naval vessels, to Port-au-Prince as a sort of Haitian Bay of Pigs.

And it comes from our esteemed colleagues on the Left, the editors of In These Times, who urge the Clinton Administration to "ask the U.N. or the OAS to approve an international force to occupy Haiti, restore Aristide to office, and withdraw as soon as the army and police are disbanded, their leaders exiled or jailed, and a new force established under civilian control."

The Clinton Administration, which has displayed, on this issue and all others, a distinct proclivity to cave in to substantial pressure of any kind, has begun to let it be known that U.S. military intervention in Haiti is no longer unthinkable.

Has anybody asked the Haitians?

Fortunately, somebody finally has. National Public Radio, in a thoroughly impressive piece of reporting early in May, asked a broad cross-section of Haitians whether they would welcome military intervention to end the brutal repression, the unchecked economic decline, and the all but unimaginable poverty in their tragic country.

With hardly an exception, Haitians said No. Emphatically.

Unsurprisingly, Haiti's military rulers said No, and added that they would resist any military occupation force. But Aristide's most ardent and devoted supporters also said No, and said it as decisively as did their military oppressors. The underground resistance, waging a heroic struggle against overwhelming odds, said No. The wealthy businessmen of Port-au-Prince said No. The unemployed and underemployed, the peasants...