John LeBoutillier, NewsMax.com. Monday April 10, 2000
Fidel Castro is preparing an island-wide parade for little Elians return.
Only this is not a parade of joy; it is a parade of power, of fear and, most of all, of control.
Control, through fear, intimidation, threats and force is the mantra and credo of all communist regimes.
Fidel Castro seized power through force 41 years ago and has kept that power through control. Castro and his brother Raul, head of internal security (thats the communist version of the Gestapo), pride themselves on their expertise in stifling dissent and crushing people who even whisper a
thought about removing them from power.
The question that has not been asked in the midst of the Elian Gonzalez saga is why does Castro so desperately want this particular six-year-old boy back in Cuba?
The answer is simple -- and can be found in the tale of John Noble, a wonderful American hero from Pennsylvania.
As a teen-ager in the late 1930s, Noble went to pre-war Germany to work in his fathers camera factory. Not long thereafter Hitler closed his borders and refused to allow any foreigners out of Germany. Then, when the war began, he had Noble placed under house arrest, where he remained until
1945. As the war was ending and Noble hoped to finally return home, the Soviets seized that part of Germany. Noble was captured by Soviet soldiers and taken to the Russian prison system -- known as the Gulag.
Soon Noble found himself in an underground prison facility inside the Arctic Circle!
In this prison were many Soviet citizens locked up because they dared to disagree with Stalins authoritarian regime.
But that is not all. Also inside this underground dungeon were other prisoners. And, like John Noble, these men and women and children were not Russians! In fact, there were citizens from 70 different countries in that prison camp. There were English, French, Japanese and Australians, along with
John Noble.
Noble explains the Soviets thinking: "Their entire system was predicated on the government controlling the people. In order to do that, the government had to convince the Russian people that the government was so powerful that no one was beyond the reach of the government. That is why
even inside the Gulag -- where these poor Russian souls are completely powerless -- the Moscow government wanted to demonstrate its all-powerful hold over these people.
"And you know how they did it? By having supposedly 'free' people -- Englishmen, Frenchmen, Japanese and, most of all, Americans -- under their thumb inside these prison camps. Then the officials would get up and say to the Russians, 'You have no chance of freedom. You cannot escape our
reach. Look, even these Americans cannot escape us.'"
(Noble says that Soviet agents around the world would literally "swipe" people off the streets in London, Melbourne and Caracas. Moscow wanted people from all over the world locked up in the Gulag to break the will of the Soviet dissenters.)
Thanks to the intervention in 1953 of newly elected President Dwight Eisenhower, John Noble was negotiated out of the Soviet Union. He came home and has lived a healthy -- and free -- life here ever since.
John Nobles observation of the length the Soviet government would go to "control" its people is applicable to the case of little Elian.
Fidel Castro sees in Elian the perfect example of Havanas total control over all Cuban citizens.
When that little boy is returned to Cuba he is going to be Castros poster boy. And the message is going to be simple and clear to all Cubans: "No one can escape. Not even those who make it safely to the shores of America. We now will bring you back."
For 40 years the great hope for the poor beleaguered Cuban people has been the dream that they might escape to "Heaven On Earth" -- the United States of America. Only ninety miles away -- and light years of difference in freedom, hope and faith.
Castro has been fighting this ongoing exodus ever since seizing power. The possibility of leaving for America has consistently threatened to undermine Castros total control over his people.
This is precisely why he has seized upon this case and applied maximum pressure to Clinton. In the case of a little, helpless boy who made it to "Heaven," the evil Castro sees the chance to undermine that one hope that sustains his people.
He will take Elian and parade him around Cuba as his trophy. The message to all who even contemplate trying to leave: "You cannot escape me. I can and will come and bring you back here."
Furthermore, Castro now has a new ally in his ability to find, capture and bring-back-to-Cuba: Bill Clinton.
The most disgraceful aspect of the Elian affair has been Washingtons duplicity. Instead of trying to undermine Castros rule -- as Reagan would have done and Bush did when invading a removing another un-elected dictator, Manuel Noriega -- the Clinton Crowd wants to legitimize it in
preparation of a normalization of relations.
Clinton -- and the craven Republican leadership -- are merely regurgitating public opinion polls that show a vast majority who want to "have the boy reunited with his Dad." Well, when a poll question is put that way, of course a boy belongs with his father. What is lacking by that
majority of Americans is any understanding of the conditions inside Cuba. Nor do most Americans know how evil Castro is. The people here are nice and well-meaning and idealistic -- and hopelessly naïve about the repression in Cuba.
For example, I took a telephone call during a NewsMax-related talk radio show in San Antonio last week from a good conservative. When I mentioned that Elians father, Juan Miguel, is afraid to speak truthfully while in America because his mother remains behind in Cuba, this caller said, "Ill
bet she is the safest person inside Cuba. The media would never allow anything to happen to her."
I almost dropped the phone! I had to tell this fellow, "The media? In Cuba there is no media inside Cuba."
And we have now learned that, to keep control over Juan Miguel while here in the States, Castro has placed both grandmothers in a compound.
One can only imagine the pressure Juan Miguel is under.
And one can see how excited Castro now is. For the first time his reach now extends all the way into the United States.
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