CUBANET ... CUBANEWS

April 13, 2000



Dreher: Let's Not Forget Horrors Of Communism

By Rod Dreher. The New York Post. April 13, 2000

IF THE U.S. government launches an assault on Lazaro Gonzalez's house, it's unlikely to be like Janet Reno's blitzkrieg against the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.

But it's still going to be a sorry damn sight in the land of the free and the brave.

Reno says she hopes the "rule of law" prevails in the Elian dispute -- which means she intends for the Miami relatives to stand by silently while her agents deliver the kid to a land where the rule of law doesn't exist.

Juan Miguel Gonzalez is deluding himself if he thinks taking Elian back to Cuba means he'll regain custody.

The poor boy will be Fidel's slave -- and Juan Miguel has no right to complain. Cuba's Constitution grants parents the right to their children "only as long as their influence doesn't go against the political objectives of the state."

Incredibly, many in the American media liken the Miami Cubans to the obstreperous 1960s segregationists who refused to obey the feds. This reveals a prejudice that should make people profoundly skeptical of American reporting on the Elian crisis.

Who's to say the Miami Cubans don't have more in common with Martin Luther King and the courageous civil-rights protesters who were willing to go to jail before obeying an unjust law?

I find myself hoping that, barring a surprise defection from Juan Miguel, his wife and baby, the Miami relatives find a way to take Elian underground.

Let Uncle Lazaro go to jail for the boy's freedom; President Bush will grant him amnesty as his first official act.

When Elian first came to these shores, it wasn't hard to believe he should be sent back to his father immediately.

So what if his dad was a poor relative to the Miami family? Material prosperity does not a good family make -- and sometimes quite the opposite. The bond between father and son is sacred, and should not be broken except under extreme conditions.

Since then, it has become clear that growing up under Castro -- particularly for Elian, given the way Castro has played cruel geopolitics with the child and his family -- could reasonably be called an extreme condition. A family court must decide this case.

We know Juan Miguel's family may have contacted his Miami relatives before Elian and his mother made their desperate flight for freedom, to let the Miami family know the boy was on his way. This implies that Juan Miguel supported the escape.

Indeed, he never complained about Elian's fate -- until Castro made it an issue.

Nothing Juan Miguel said about this case while he was in Cuba could be taken seriously. But now that he's in America, there is still no reason to think that Juan Miguel Gonzalez can speak freely about his wishes for his son.

Everything he does and everything he says -- even his arrival statement at Dulles Airport -- is orchestrated by the Cuban government.

If Castro says that Juan Miguel is free to defect, and take as many of his family members with him as he likes, then and only then can he be considered to be acting without duress.

We don't have to like the way the Miami Cubans behave at times to recognize that they know something about life under communism that most Americans do not.

Why are we so certain that their anguish over Elian is merely a matter of Cold War politics? These are people who themselves, or their families, have suffered horribly under a totalitarian dictatorship.

They know Cuba is not like every other country.

They know Elian's life will not be his own any more, that it will belong to a dictator who has shown nothing but murderous contempt for the sanctity of families.

They know that an innocent boy will be used as a propaganda tool to promote a regime that has turned the island into a squalid jail.

The infuriating thing is: we know this too. Haven't we learned anything from history? No one can feel good about separating a father and a son.

But given the extremely grim legacy of communism, particularly of the Cuban sort, how much worse ought one to feel about condemning a small child to that kind of suffering?

e-mail: dreher@nypost.com

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