Ask the Haitians.

Gradually but inexorably, the pressure is building for U.S. military intervention in Haiti.

It comes from such influential members of Congress as Representative David Obey, Wisconsin Democrat, a leading light of the House establishment, who says: "As long as I've been old enough to read and breathe, I've opposed military intervention by the United States in this Hemisphere. But I feel Haiti is a special circumstance."

It comes from liberals like Anthony Lewis, the respected columnist for The New York Times, who believes the time has come to use force to reinstate Haiti's duly elected and immensely popular president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to the office from which he was ousted by a savage military coup in 1991. It comes from conservatives like William Safire, also of The New York Times, who would dispatch an armed force of Haitian refugees, backed by a U.S. aircraft carrier "loaded with helicopter gunships," as well as other other U.S. naval vessels, to Port-au-Prince as a sort of Haitian Bay of Pigs.

And it comes from our esteemed colleagues on the Left, the editors of In These Times, who urge the Clinton Administration to "ask the U.N. or the OAS to approve an international force to occupy Haiti, restore Aristide to office, and withdraw as soon as the army and police are disbanded, their leaders exiled or jailed, and a new force established under civilian control."

The Clinton Administration, which has displayed, on this issue and all others, a distinct proclivity to cave in to substantial pressure of any kind, has begun to let it be known that U.S. military intervention in Haiti is no longer unthinkable.

Has anybody asked the Haitians?

Fortunately, somebody finally has. National Public Radio, in a thoroughly impressive piece of reporting early in May, asked a broad cross-section of Haitians whether they would welcome military intervention to end the brutal repression, the unchecked economic decline, and the all but unimaginable poverty in their tragic country.

With hardly an exception, Haitians said No. Emphatically.

Unsurprisingly, Haiti's military rulers said No, and added that they would resist any military occupation force. But Aristide's most ardent and devoted supporters also said No, and said it as decisively as did their military oppressors. The underground resistance, waging a heroic struggle against overwhelming odds, said No. The wealthy businessmen of Port-au-Prince said No. The unemployed and underemployed, the peasants trying to scratch out a subsistence living, said No. It was an amazing display of unanimity in a deeply divided country.

Why this consensus among Haitians that however miserable their situation may be, it will not be fixed - it cannot be fixed - by military intervention, by "reforms" imposed at gunpoint? Because they remember the agony their country experienced from 1915 to 1934 under U.S. military occupation. They recall the humiliation inflicted on their parents and grandparents, the indignities to which an entire people was subjected, the brutality that foreshadowed today's murderous military rule. And they understand that most of Haiti's pain has its antecedents in those two decades of U.S. military occupation - two decades used by the occupying power to establish a tyranny sustained by a ruthless military and police apparatus that remains intact today.

The Haitians would rather put up with anything - even the unbearable status quo - than undergo another military takeover by outsiders.

If the Haitians don't want to be liberated by the U.S. Marines - even by U.S. Marines or their stand-ins wearing United Nations helmets or Organization of American States arm bands - who has the right to claim to be exercising judgment superior to theirs? Representative Obey? Tony Lewis? Bill Safire? Our friends at In These Times?

Let's recall what Government it is that is being asked to restore democracy to Haiti by force of arms. What Government are we to count on to mount a clean invasion of Haiti - the words "surgical strike" come to mind - and, after purging its military dictators, make a discreet and hasty exit? Why, it's the Government of the United States - the very one that has wrecked havoc every time it has invaded a country throughout history.

And it's the Clinton Administration, to be precise - the very same one that betrayed its promise to accept Haitian refugees and sent them back, instead, to be tortured and killed. It's the same Administration that still maintains the Army's School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, as a training ground for all the military despots of the Hemisphere, including Haiti's bloodthirsty rulers. It's the same Administration that allowed its security agencies to smear and slander Aristide even while they were supposedly working to restore him to office.

And now this same Government, this same Administration is to impose democracy on Haiti by force of arms?

There is much the Clinton Administration can do to help make up for its own past transgressions - and those of previous Administrations - against the people of Haiti. It can begin by doing what Bill Clinton promised to do when he was running for the Presidency: admit all Haitians who have reasonable grounds for seeking asylum in the United States. It can make all possible diplomatic and political and economic moves to restore Aristide to office, including full application of the measures that have been endorsed by the Administration in principle but ignored or undermined in practice. It can treat the military rulers of Haiti as the outlaws and pariahs they are.

But it makes no sense at all for someone who has, in David Obey's words, always "opposed military intervention by the United States in this hemisphere" to embrace military intervention now in Haiti. Surely the record of U.S. military interventions in the last decade or two - in Grenada and Panama, in the Persian Gulf and in Somalia, should persuade anyone that this is not the way to achieve democracy, or peace, or economic justice. In all places and at all times, military intervention is the enemy of democracy and peace and economic justice.

Just ask the Haitians.