ABSTRACT
The difference between Haiti and Vietnam is that if the Haitian intervention does not accomplish what needed to be done—which is to begin the development of that thwarted land toward a viable society—there will be direct repercussions. Former FBI agent and international law enforcement specialist Oliver “Buck” Revell came back from an observer tour of Haiti recently and summed up this situation well. March 30 marks a very different and much more positive kind of withdrawal: our troops leaving Haiti. Of course, Haiti looks and is quite different from Vietnam. On the battleship leaving Vietnamese waters, the last American ambassador seemed close to being out of his mind with anguish. If Vietnam was a sin, it was the sin of a rich country, one that thought it could afford such faraway “adventures.” Surely that twenty-year-old Vietnam syndrome has been broken for good?.
