Major Owens: “I rise tonight to update the situation in Haiti. I want to talk about our Haitian policy and the fact that that Haitian…”

“I rise tonight to update the situation in Haiti. I want to talk about our Haitian policy and the fact that that Haitian policy, and all of the activities surrounding Haiti presently, represent a mushrooming United States foreign policy and domestic moral crisis. Mr. Speaker, it is a foreign policy crisis, it is a human rights crisis, and it is a crisis which is producing an erosion of the moral authority of the United States. Haiti is just a small country compared to the United States and the industrialized nations of the world. Haiti has a population of 7 million. Haiti has no great amount of natural resources, no oil, nothing of great desirability with respect to the industrialized nations and their needs for raw materials. Haiti is not militarily a strategic location for any United States military concerns. However, Mr. Speaker, Haiti is in the Western Hemisphere, and Haiti has a long history of being dominated by the United States policymakers like every other nation in the Western Hemisphere.”