Miami raid
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED APRIL 30, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
"A show of force ... to show we were in control"
And so the Clinton administration, which began its term using tanks to knock down the walls and staircases of a plywood church in Texas, spraying in flammable nerve agent while holding firefighting equipment miles away, the better to incinerate scores of innocent women and children already choking on their own vomit, has decided to go out in similar style, staging a violent and unnecessary pre-dawn raid by a massed force of bounding overweight paramilitary goons armed with German submachine guns, in order to "show who's boss" in the matter of a 6-year-old Cuban refugee.
This is the administration which wants to take all defensive arms away from us law-abiding peasants, mind you, since "guns never solve anything." Yet when faced with even a momentary frustration in the courts (no, Elian's Florida relatives had not violated any court order to turn over the kid. In fact, it was Attorney General Janet Reno who went to court a few days before her daredevil raid, seeking a custody order, and was specifically turned down), the Clintons revert to the old ways -- MP-5 machine guns in the dawn. Unless Lon Horiuchi is available, of course.
Ms. Reno then went on TV, telling us the wonderful thing about TV is that we can all see the kid was never in danger -- the gunman's finger was indexed along the receiver, not actually inside the trigger guard.
Hey, good one. Actually, we couldn't see what happened inside the house on TV, Ms. Reno, because your goons slammed the pool cameraman, NBC's Tony Zumbado, in the forehead with their gun butts and stomped him so badly he had to be hospitalized (this according to NewsMax.com -- NBC itself having become such a government courtesan in its electronic dotage that the network never bothered to report this, to the best of my knowledge.)
Ms. Reno said her agents had to use force because the Cuban-Americans outside the house resisted the raid, "throwing ropes" around her agents. This bizarre statement led to a correction from the Justice Department a few hours later -- no ropes, it turns out; the agents merely kept tripping over Mr. Zumbado's trailing video cables after they beat him to the ground.
But as for the notion that AP photographer Alan Diaz's still photo demonstrates that the kid was never in danger, take another look at the photo. Then ask anyone who's ever fired a subgun how they jump around if you discharge them, full auto, without the stock firmly tucked into your shoulder.
A friend called me after the raid to point out that, in his younger days, his ex-wife refused to obey a court order and allow him to see his kids. When he asked the court to enforce its own order, the court told him he was out of luck.
"Why didn't they send 100 guys with German submachine guns to break down her door in the middle of the night and bring me my kids?" he asked. "At least I had a court order."
(Though Reno's second in command at Justice initially insisted they had no arrest or custody order because "We didn't need one," the story changed within a few days. We're now informed that instead of going to Federal District Judge Michael Moore -- who was familiar with the case -- Reno's goons waited till after 7 p.m. Good Friday evening to obtain a "search warrant" from a low-ranking rubber-stamp magistrate, based on an absurdly perjured affidavit that young Elian was an "illegal alien" being "concealed" in the house.)
For that matter, imagine how our "justice system" would respond if someone like my friend hired armed mercenaries to go enforce his court order, seizing his kids from his ex-wife at gunpoint. If he and his hired hands were arrested, do you suppose they could count on Ms. Reno to go on TV, insisting they not be charged with any crime, since "The pictures clearly show their index fingers lay alongside the receivers of their full-auto submachine guns, not inside the trigger guards"?
Welcome to the rule of law in modern America -- one set of rules for us peasants, and no law at all to restrict the government goons.
But this was all about getting little Elian some "quiet time with his father," wasn't it? Even though, according to The New York Times, Juan Miguel Gonzalez divorced Elian's mom in May of 1991, and Elian was born on Dec. 6, 1993. Do the math. This father -- if any DNA test would even confirm he is the father -- has no automatic parental rights in any American court.
Besides which, Castro's henchmen keep referring to little Elian as the "property of the Cuban state," and have made it abundantly clear that, upon return to the slave state, little Elian will be housed in a special beachfront re-education camp, 60 miles from his father, who doesn't even own a car.
"Family togetherness," Communist style.
Who's really behind all this?
Juan Miguel Gonzalez's attorney is Greg Craig. A friend of Bill Clinton since his days at Yale law school, Craig -- the guy who asked the national press to "please refrain" from covering the story too closely -- is the guy who helped young Bill and Hillary get their first apartment together.
This thing has more Clinton fingerprints on it than the Rose Law Firm billing records. Why are we to suppose Judge J. L. Edmondson of the 11th Circuit issued a special injunction right after Ms. Reno's latest raid, warning the administration not to spirit young Elian away "to any place ... lying beyond the power and jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States, including, but not limited to, any place that is or may be entitled to diplomatic immunity"?
Gee, I don't know. But let anyone dare speculate that Bill Clinton, the draft dodger who visited Moscow while organizing anti-war protests in London in the 1960s, the fellow who sold sensitive military satellite and missile technology to the Chinese Red Army over the objections of his own cabinet officers after accepting millions of dollars in illegally laundered Chinese bribes while hosting Red Chinese spies in the Lincoln bedroom, is organizing this whole affair on behalf of his communist buddy Fidel Castro, and that person would surely be dismissed as just another "black-helicopter conspiracy nut," wouldn't he?
After all, it's terribly dated to pretend there's any evidence of statist leaning in the decision of The New York Times and Time and Newsweek not to run Alan Diaz's dramatic photo of the child and the G-man on their covers last week (most opting instead for the staged, government-approved "happy photo" of Elian reunited with his "dad") or in the recent declaration on national TV by Newsweek's Eleanor Clift that "to be a poor child in Cuba may in many instances be better than being a poor child in Miami."
So what if Human Rights Watch reports "President" Castro has made it a crime to distribute bibles, that he "restricts such fundamental human rights as expression, association, assembly, movement, and the press," that he "imprisons or kills people for the crime of trying to leave the country" -- which is why Elian's mother died in the first place.
(Though Castro did have a crucial accomplice. On the campaign trail in 1992, candidate Clinton called for an end to George Bush's "cruel and inhumane" policy of returning refugees to oppression in Haiti and Cuba. Then, once elected, Clinton promptly reversed his stance, toughening restrictions and -- contrary to international law -- fining private ship captains $3,000 for every refugee rescued and brought to an American shore. Ever heard Bill Clinton condemn the communist "evil empire"? I don't think so.)
So what if Cuban parents who refuse to raise their kids as good communists can now be charged with the crime of "hindering the normal development of the child"? So what if Human Rights Watch reports Castro has so far murdered 15,000 of his political opponents?
What's that, in the view of the Clintons and their media apologists, compared to the kind of "child safety" ushered in by such achievements as "modest, sensible, civilian gun control"?
And if one more child has to be sacrificed in the cause of rehabilitating state socialism in the eyes of the American public, well, who's counting any more?
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
