Haiti

To the Editors of the Crimson:

Your editorial of Feb. 12, on Haiti adopts the tone that the United States was responsible for the Duvalier dynasty's rule, and that we should now provide aid to Haiti as a form of reparations. I personally think that both charity and self-interest should motivate us to help Haiti; but your attempt to blame this country for the Duvaliers is absurd.

Your editorial rests on two false assumptions: 1. The United States Government is some kind of devil that likes regimes such as the Duvalier's, or considers them expedient. 2. American "support" kept the Duvaliers in power.

As to the first, is it really plausible that any American administration of the past 30 years, any President, any Secretary of State, genuinely liked the Duvaliers? Thought that their regime was better for American interests than the kind of government Costa Rica enjoys? To put the question is to expose its absurdity.

As to the second point. Is it your contention that the United States ought to have no normal economic or diplomatic relations with authoritarian or dictatorial regimes? This policy was applied to China for 25 years and is still being applied to Cuba. Do you approve of the result? Would you recommend applying this policy to the Soviet Union? Of course not. Such sanctions work only when there is a genuine chance of changing a nation's form of government from dictatorial to democratic. By the nature of things, there has to be popular support for such a change. Where the existing dictatorial regime is in addition unscrupulous and well-armed, force is also necessary. Can the United States by its own power supply both the force and the political will to change another nation's form of government? Would you not greet an attempt to do so with a scathing editorial on the arrogance of power?

Where popular support for democracy exists, as in Grenada, the United States can sometimes supply the necessary force. But unless a people is politically mature enough to institute and sustain democracy on its own, we cannot gain anything by meddling in their internal affairs--other than, perhaps, ameliorating their misery a little by cautious and limited measures.

The Duvalier regime maintained itself by force of arms. Nothing we could have done by means of economic sanctions, or even force, could have restored the Haitian people to freedom until they were ready to sieze it themselves. That they could get rid of Duvalier themselves was shown last week. Whether they can avoid falling into the hands of another such as he remains to be seen, and not all our money nor all our might can ensure that they do not. We do not, in fact, have the power to order the whole world as we like, and consequently we do not deserve to bear the moral responsibility for everything in it that we find odious. Ira J Klein   Center For International Affairs