On the Scene: Getting to Know the General

GENERAL Raoul Cédras sat serenely at the colonial headquarters of the Haitian army. From the rickety balcony of his office he could see the American gunboats, deployed for the umpteenth time this century in hostile action against his country. Below him, in the sink of Port-au-Prince, he could also see the empty streets, the closed factories, the total breakdown of economic activity in what is already the poorest country in the hemisphere. None of it persuaded him that the time had come to give up power.

Indeed, as the UN deadline for the restoration of President Jean Bertrand Aristide came—and went—le général expressed a certain pity for the Clinton Administration. “They don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve got themselves into an absolute muddle, and now they’re prisoners of their own actions,” he said, speaking in a tone of light irony and nonchalance, as if he were a French cavalry officer.

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Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

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GENERAL Raoul Cédras sat serenely at the colonial headquarters of the Haitian army. From the rickety balcony of his office he could see the American gunboats, deployed for the umpteenth time this century in hostile action against his country. Below him, in the sink of Port-au-Prince, he could also see the empty streets, the closed factories, the total breakdown of economic activity in what is already the poorest country in the hemisphere. None of it persuaded him that the time had come to give up power.

Indeed, as the UN deadline for the restoration of President Jean Bertrand Aristide came—and went—le général expressed a certain pity for the Clinton Administration. “They don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve got themselves into an absolute muddle, and now they’re prisoners of their own actions,” he said, speaking in a tone of light irony and nonchalance, as if he were a French cavalry officer.