The United States further crippled Haiti by occupying the country, often using brutal tactics, from 1915 to 1934; by coddling the Duvalier dictatorships for nearly three decades; and by using paramilitary thugs as CIA spies.

For all those years, the United States behaved as if it was still confining the pest. After Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown in a 1991 military coup, the administration of the senior President Bush stopped thousands of fleeing Haitians at sea and sent most of them right into the coup’s arms. Thousands more piled up at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In the United States itself, Haitian-Americans were humiliated by a total ban on their blood donations for 10 months in 1990, because of unfounded fears about AIDS. America’s Haiti policy was so hostile that luminaries such as the late tennis great Arthur Ashe, despite suffering from AIDS, allowed himself to be arrested in a protest at the White House in 1992.

President Clinton left Bush policies unchanged for the first year and a half of his presidency, sparking cries of racism from members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Clinton finally ordered an invasion of the island nation to restore a democratic government. But US ambivalence continued through the junior President Bush, who refused to grant temporary protected immigration status to Haitians, even when the island has been blasted by hurricanes. Such status is frequently extended to immigrants of nations wracked with natural or political disasters, allowing them to work legally.

President Obama sounded a change in tone when he said this summer that he was “very sympathetic’’ to Haitian immigrant issues. But ever since, angst in Haiti has built into anger as his administration has continued the old interdiction-at-sea policies and the continued deportation of Haitians. The deportation line is about 30,000 people long. Haiti, a nation where the government says 60 percent of its budget depends on foreign aid, badly needs the remittances of those 30,000 people if they could work here legally.

The earthquake gave Obama an easy first step. The administration quickly announced that it was temporarily stopping deportations. The devastation is now so obvious and the recovery will take so long, there is no better time to grant protected status as well. That is still the beginning of the beginning. There is also no better opportunity for the United States to completely rethink its entire policy toward Haiti, to see this nation through to a stable economy and democracy.

Obama will have to face down skeptics such as radio host Rush Limbaugh. Displaying a lack of sensitivity surprising even for him, Limbaugh said the quake plays “right into Obama’s hands – humanitarian, compassionate. They’ll use this to burnish, shall we say, credibility with the black community, the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It’s made to order for him.’’

Casting this crisis in those terms is appalling. Obama is now offering “every element of our national capacity – our diplomacy and development assistance; the power of our military and most importantly, the compassion of our country.’’ But the true test of our capacity and compassion comes after the relief efforts fade from Page One.

Two centuries of destabilization surely merit at least 20 years of restoration. As Haiti emerges from its rubble, Obama has a chance to do what no other American president has done: dig America out of the many faults in its policy toward Haiti.