The fact that the Clinton Administration's foreign policy lacks any direction or purpose should not be news to anyone. Our Fearless leader's record has been criticized for being one long succession of bumbling and general incompetence in Somalia, Bosnia, North Korea and Haiti.

In the last case, it seems that the president is building up the resolve and the backbone to send in the Marines to "restore democracy" and return Jean Bertrand Aristide to the presidency from which he was so rudely ejected in September 1991.

But invading Haiti would be a big mistake. And it would be an even worse move if the U.S. government were to restore Aristide to power.

The single most important reason for rejecting an invasion of Haiti is that it does not further any discernible interest of the United States.

The current regime in Haiti does not pose even a potential threat to this country or its citizens. The U.S. does not have any economic or political interests within Haiti it self that are threatened.

Some will argue that it is in the interest of the U.S. to promote democracy and human rights everywhere. According to this logic, we should invade every country that does not pass democratic muster.

Shall we then invade Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), where the military toppled a civilian regime? What about Gambia, the West African nation whose democratic leader was overthrown in a coup only two or three days ago? And let's not forget Saudi Arabia and Syria and Cuba and Zaire.

Haiti itself has a 300-year history of oppressive government, and supporter of the invasion can advance no reason for thinking that American military intervention will promote lasting democracy or respect for human rights there.

From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. occupied Haiti for strategic reasons connected with the route to the Panama Canal and attempted along the way to build up the economic and political infrastructure of Haiti.

That effort was a failure, and its only lasting effect was to renew strongly anti-American feelings in Haiti.

But even if it were in America's interest to invade Haiti, and even if the American government possessed the ability to remake Haiti in its own image (as it did so successfully in Somalia), the invasion would still be a bad idea because of President Clinton's determination to restore Aristide to power.

Many people in America seem to have acquired the nation that the struggle in Haiti is one of Good versus Evil, with Aristide in the vanguard of the forces of righteousness, facing the cruel overlords of the Haitian army.

Well, the Haitian army has killed a lot of people since 1991 (3,000 by some estimates) And it seems to have little interest in human rights and other such niceties.

But Aristide is no angel, although he was once a Catholic priest. In 1988 Pope John Paul II defrocked Aristide for preaching in favor of a class war in Haiti. Aristide has also made a point of repeatedly denounceing the U.S.

And Aristide's record during his seven months in office was one of corruption and abuses of political and human rights, as Christopher Caldwell so thoroughly documented in the July issue of The American Spectator.