As the insurrection in Haiti gets bloodier, we find ourselves thinking of the wisdom of President Monroe, he of the famous doctrine that the European powers were henceforth to stay out of our hemisphere. Old Monroe reckoned this kind of thing would be “dangerous to our peace and safety.” His warnings come to mind today, as the French start trying to insinuate themselves into Haiti with a scheme to send 4,000 troops, no doubt veterans of their fiasco in Ivory Coast. Meantime the United Nations has started itching to intervene, which would mean the Russians and the Chinese would, inter alia, be in the Caribbean.

The Bush administration’s response to the Haiti crisis so far has been woefully isolationist. It has sent only 50 Marines, with the modest mission of securing our embassy, while we also stepped up air patrols to guard against an onslaught of Haitian boat people. It’s a crimped view of American responsibilities that limits American interests in Haiti, which is part, after all, of our own backyard, to protecting the embassy building and staving off the arrival of new recruits for our own democracy.

Certainly the American military is already engaged usefully elsewhere — Iraq — and Haiti is a diversion from the big American national security objective at the moment, the war on terrorism. But a vacuum left by America in Haiti will be filled by the French, the United Nations, and the assorted ruffians who are now running the country and rebelling against the country’s leaders. This is a situation that is made for American support of the centrist and democratic parties, known as the Plateforme Democratique.

It’s hard to recall a leader who has squandered a democratic mandate worse than President Aristide. The Plateforme wants an orderly transfer of power that would start with the right of assembly and speech, the release of political prisoners, the naming of a new prime minister and a new police chief, leading up to the resignation of Mr. Aristide on March 18. These goals are worthy of American support. There may be those who say that trouble in Haiti has been going on for generations now. But the failure to stay invested strategically in Haiti would provide for temptations that Monroe understood had to be opposed.