Whatever is wrong with Haiti this time around, sending American soldiers there won’t fix it.

After its presidential assassination, Haiti is requesting American soldiers. It wouldn’t be the first time American soldiers deployed to Haiti. We’ve been doing it for around a century with no end and no positive outcomes in sight. Whether it was Wilson’s intervention in Haiti or Bill Clinton’s arguably illegal Operation Uphold Democracy on behalf of Aristide, it’s always a bad idea. Not so much because of the casualties.

One American soldier was killed during Clinton’s regime change operation in Haiti. One American life lost is too many. Of course. So are the millions that any kind of deployment would cost.

But also we have a century of evidence that American forces aren’t fixing Haiti. Neither is American aid. Only Haiti can fix itself.

The Biden administration currently seems less than eager to deploy to Haiti. The optics of it are bad right after the fake withdrawal from Afghanistan. But enough lobbying, especially aimed at influential Senate members, could easily change that. So could an escalating humanitarian disaster which is likely enough to happen. Meanwhile we’re likely to be stuck with more Haitian TPS migrants and more official refugees clamoring to come here.

Those are the only legitimate reasons for deploying American forces to Haiti, but history shows little evidence of that working either.