Handwringing over Haiti.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: Pundit Watch - Cover Story - Column

I'm having Raoul Cedras and the boys over for dinner. Wanna come? Hey, don't be nervous. "He's not the demon you think he is," insists John McLaughlin. "His track record is okay in some respects."

See, the human-rights observers for the U.N./Organization of American States International Civilian Commission in Haiti are just hysterical. They seem to think that the monthly toll of sixty-plus political killings of suspected Aristide supporters at the hands of Cedras and company isn't "okay." But then, they haven't watched The McLaughlin Group. And some people, especially those pesky feminists and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, might find the rise in the numbers of politically motivated rape in Haiti somewhat demonic. What do they know? They should kick back with John and see Cedras for the pussycat he is.

This is just one of the more bizarre moments in the story of how pundits have sought to enlighten us about Haiti. The debate in punditland has focused on the following questions: 1) Isn't Jean-Bertrand Aristide nuts, as the CIA keeps insisting, and even if he isn't, isn't he just as sadistic, vindictive, and lethal as the military regime? 2) Should we go in or not? If not, how do we keep those dark-skinned people--who "practice voodoo widely," McLaughlin solemnly warns--out of Florida? 3) Isn't Haiti so unalterably, inherently barbaric that it could never benefit from all we could teach it about establishing a rational, humane, equitable, and democratic society?

As this idiotic and self-congratulatory debate, punctuated by TV images of starving and sick children, surrounds us, I find myself completely torn about what to do or not do. The strange sides and alliances that are forming don't help. While the Clinton Administration rattles its sabers (or, more aptly, its penknives), and wonders whether an invasion of Haiti would do for Bill's poll ratings what the Gulf war did for George's, the world of pundit debate has turned upside down.

Christopher Hitchens of The Nation argues for military intervention, and he is not the only liberal or progressive to do so. At the same time, the hawks who cheered like drunken fans at a cock fight when Reagan invaded Grenada and Bush went into Panama and Iraq are now suddenly doves. McLaughlin resembles George McGovern circa 1972 when he argues against military intervention, rightly noting that after the last invasion, in 1915, "We stayed for nineteen years, leaving nothing behind except ill will."...