Slowpoke_Rodrigo
New member
ESSAY
Frankly, I liked both pictures.
Yup, I gotta confess, that now-famous picture of a U.S. marshal in Miami pointing an automatic weapon toward Donato Dalrymple and ordering him in the name of the U.S. government to turn over Elián González warmed my heart. They should put that picture up in every visa line in every U.S. consulate around the world, with a caption that reads: "America is a country where the rule of law rules. This picture illustrates what happens to those who defy the rule of law and how far our government and people will go to preserve it. Come all ye who understand that."
And I was also warmed by the picture of Elián back in his father's arms. Some things you can fake -- like a 6-year-old wagging his finger on a homemade video and telling his father to go back to Cuba without him -- and some things you can't fake. That picture of Elián and his father illustrated the very parent-child bond that our law was written to preserve.
Hats off to Janet Reno for understanding that the Elián González case was about both of these pictures: the well-being of a child and the well-being of our Constitution, on which all good things in our society rest. But hats off twice to Ms. Reno for understanding that these two noble virtues are not equal. The fear of causing some trauma to Elián by rescuing him could never outweigh the need to uphold the rule of law.
One only hopes that this affair will remind the extremists among the Miami Cubans that they are not living in their own private country, that they cannot do whatever they please and that they may hate Fidel Castro more than they love the U.S. Constitution -- but that doesn't apply to the rest of us.
One also hopes that now that Ms. Reno has ended the kidnapping of Elián by the Miami Cubans, the other hard-nosed lady in the cabinet, Madeleine Albright, will end the Miami Cubans' kidnapping of U.S. Cuba policy as well. Ms. Albright could start by relaxing the embargo on Cuba.
I share the Miami Cubans' visceral hatred of Fidel Castro's regime. It is an awful government that has taught its people to write -- and then forced its most educated to become taxi drivers and, in thousands of cases, prostitutes in order to feed their families.
But the way to hasten the end of this regime is not with embargoes and kidnappings. We have sanctioned Castro for 40 years, and so far he has outlived nine U.S. presidencies. Normally, such a policy would be adjusted. But this policy is not driven by strategic thinking. It's driven by blind hatred of Castro by the Miami Cubans, who, because of their perceived voting clout in the key state of Florida, have been able to impose this policy on the whole U.S. -- even though it has had the opposite effect we, and they, want. It punishes Cuba's people and reinforces Castro's hold on power.
What ails Cuba's economy is Fidel Castro's failed Marxism. But the U.S. embargo obscures that, giving him a foreign bogeyman to blame for Cuba's travails and enabling him to argue that Cuba is under siege from America, therefore Cubans have to remain mobilized and he, Castro, has to keep a tight rein.
Forget Fidel Castro. He's a spent dictator who peddles Marxism while keeping his economy afloat with Thomas Cook tours and prostitution. As Ms. Albright knows, a wise U.S. policy today would be focused on shaping post-Castro Cuba, so that we don't have another Haiti -- where, after the regime collapses, everyone builds a raft to get to Miami -- and so the Cuban people don't have another 40 years of repression. Our best tool for shaping post-Castro Cuba is letting more Cubans study in the U.S., training their technocrats in managing a modern state and, yes, opening the way for greater U.S. investment in Cuba, and for money flows, trade and family visits. At best, this will create much greater internal pressures on Castro to open his regime, and at worst it will help ensure that whoever succeeds him will have to change.
It was precisely the ease with which the hard-line Cuban-Americans kidnapped U.S. policy on Cuba for all these years -- with the help of pandering politicians -- that made them believe they could get away with kidnapping Elián. America is a lot better off today because Janet Reno taught them otherwise, and a million Cuban children would be better off tomorrow if Madeleine Albright could administer a similar lesson in foreign policy. Go ladies!
------------------
Slowpoke Rodrigo...he pack a gon...
I voted for the Neal Knox 13
I'll see you at the TFL End Of Summer Meet!
Frankly, I liked both pictures.
Yup, I gotta confess, that now-famous picture of a U.S. marshal in Miami pointing an automatic weapon toward Donato Dalrymple and ordering him in the name of the U.S. government to turn over Elián González warmed my heart. They should put that picture up in every visa line in every U.S. consulate around the world, with a caption that reads: "America is a country where the rule of law rules. This picture illustrates what happens to those who defy the rule of law and how far our government and people will go to preserve it. Come all ye who understand that."
And I was also warmed by the picture of Elián back in his father's arms. Some things you can fake -- like a 6-year-old wagging his finger on a homemade video and telling his father to go back to Cuba without him -- and some things you can't fake. That picture of Elián and his father illustrated the very parent-child bond that our law was written to preserve.
Hats off to Janet Reno for understanding that the Elián González case was about both of these pictures: the well-being of a child and the well-being of our Constitution, on which all good things in our society rest. But hats off twice to Ms. Reno for understanding that these two noble virtues are not equal. The fear of causing some trauma to Elián by rescuing him could never outweigh the need to uphold the rule of law.
One only hopes that this affair will remind the extremists among the Miami Cubans that they are not living in their own private country, that they cannot do whatever they please and that they may hate Fidel Castro more than they love the U.S. Constitution -- but that doesn't apply to the rest of us.
One also hopes that now that Ms. Reno has ended the kidnapping of Elián by the Miami Cubans, the other hard-nosed lady in the cabinet, Madeleine Albright, will end the Miami Cubans' kidnapping of U.S. Cuba policy as well. Ms. Albright could start by relaxing the embargo on Cuba.
I share the Miami Cubans' visceral hatred of Fidel Castro's regime. It is an awful government that has taught its people to write -- and then forced its most educated to become taxi drivers and, in thousands of cases, prostitutes in order to feed their families.
But the way to hasten the end of this regime is not with embargoes and kidnappings. We have sanctioned Castro for 40 years, and so far he has outlived nine U.S. presidencies. Normally, such a policy would be adjusted. But this policy is not driven by strategic thinking. It's driven by blind hatred of Castro by the Miami Cubans, who, because of their perceived voting clout in the key state of Florida, have been able to impose this policy on the whole U.S. -- even though it has had the opposite effect we, and they, want. It punishes Cuba's people and reinforces Castro's hold on power.
What ails Cuba's economy is Fidel Castro's failed Marxism. But the U.S. embargo obscures that, giving him a foreign bogeyman to blame for Cuba's travails and enabling him to argue that Cuba is under siege from America, therefore Cubans have to remain mobilized and he, Castro, has to keep a tight rein.
Forget Fidel Castro. He's a spent dictator who peddles Marxism while keeping his economy afloat with Thomas Cook tours and prostitution. As Ms. Albright knows, a wise U.S. policy today would be focused on shaping post-Castro Cuba, so that we don't have another Haiti -- where, after the regime collapses, everyone builds a raft to get to Miami -- and so the Cuban people don't have another 40 years of repression. Our best tool for shaping post-Castro Cuba is letting more Cubans study in the U.S., training their technocrats in managing a modern state and, yes, opening the way for greater U.S. investment in Cuba, and for money flows, trade and family visits. At best, this will create much greater internal pressures on Castro to open his regime, and at worst it will help ensure that whoever succeeds him will have to change.
It was precisely the ease with which the hard-line Cuban-Americans kidnapped U.S. policy on Cuba for all these years -- with the help of pandering politicians -- that made them believe they could get away with kidnapping Elián. America is a lot better off today because Janet Reno taught them otherwise, and a million Cuban children would be better off tomorrow if Madeleine Albright could administer a similar lesson in foreign policy. Go ladies!
------------------
Slowpoke Rodrigo...he pack a gon...
I voted for the Neal Knox 13
I'll see you at the TFL End Of Summer Meet!