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So, Elian’s father is in the position of having his ex-wife steal his son and take him to a foreign country, where some distant relatives then claim him and refuse to return him because the country he lives in is ruled by someone they don’t like. Family values, I guess.
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Sometimes I think you people really don’t get it. I don’t like Bill Clinton. That doesn’t mean I can’t stand to live in the USA. But Bill Clinton doesn’t have total dictatorial power over this country. Fidel Castro is a tyrant.
Wait a minute–having seen Bill Clinton send in the troops after the kid, I’m not sure. Maybe Clinton does have total power. Scary, but true. But, he will be replaced; he can be impeached. Those are not true of Castro. Big Difference.
It’s a simple question…
Is Castro’s Cuba a better place for Elian to grow up than Miami? If yes, send him back.
If Miami is better for him, keep him there.
If you don’t want the kid to be treated like a trophy, don’t leave him in either place. Send him to Switzerland, Chile, Nebraska, wherever, but not Cuba nor Miami. But the kid’s gonna have a worse time on Cuba, blockaded little island that it is, than in the US. Castro will send him to be re-educated as the perfect little pseudo-Marxist propaganda mouthpiece for ol’ Fidel’s fascist paradise. I vote for Miami.
Familial rights? Get over it. I remember someone jumping on me (in the late, unlamented gay marriage thread) because I said terms like ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ indicated ‘blood ties.’ But now everyone’s insisting that the boy belongs with Juan Miguel Gonzalez because that’s his natural father? Sheesh!
The boy’s mother lost her life trying to get to the States. In the words of E. E. Cummings, “no slave’s unlife shall murder me for i will freely die”!
But President Clinton has triangulated his most popular possible response: Anti-Hispanics; Anti-Anti-Communists; Anti-Immigration types; weenies who think “a boy should be with his dad (SOB)”; and of course Fidel Castro will all appreciate sending the kid back to Cuba.
People who recognize Cuba as a totalitarian-fascist prison will be upset, but the Democratic-Party/teacher’s-unions/media-conglomerates have spent a generation raising up an America that knows too little of geopolitics and nothing of honor.
If Juan Miguel Gonzalez wants to take Elian back to that purgatory, that is sufficient evidence of parental incapacity. PERIOD. The boy should not go to Cuba.