President Clinton is trying to engineer a politically motivated foreign policy triumph even if it means wiping out Haiti. Starve them with sanctions, and if that doesn’t work, send in the Marines. No doubt about it. The way to save a country is to destroy it.

The United States doesn’t owe Aristide antying. He wasn’t smart enough to keep the Haitian military on his side so why should we restore him to power? We have had friendly diplomatic and economic relations with many tropical dictatorships. …

Do the Haitian people want their country to become a colony or commonwealth of the United States? Benign imperialism can work. The British colonial system did more good than harm. It provided polticial and economic stability and improved peoples lives in many countries underdeveloped then as now. The demise of British colonial imperialism was premature. Many of the colonies were unprepared for self-government.

Squeezing the Haitian people with economic sanctions to topple a government of which we disapprove is more like crimes against humanity than foreign policy. We now intercept and “process” the Haitian wanna-be political refugees on the high seas rather than in Miami. Big deal. Meanwhile, the generals luxuriate in power.

Our government jawbones China for employing slave labor while we impose and enforce an economic blockade against Haiti, a sovereign, neighboring state, exacerbating their excruciating poverty and dismal social conditions.

Human rights, Western style; way to go, chief! Carle G. Gray Sullivan