my article on Elian

[John Lacny <deathtocapitalism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

        Destined for my campus newspaper.... Which in turn is
destined to file my hate mail....

        John Lacny

****************
ELIAN AND THE EMIGRES
by John Lacny

        Ever since the first vengeful counts jumped the
French border in 1789, humanity has had to contend
with that most insufferable of personality types, the
exile counterrevolutionary.
        Cloaking crass material interest in humanitarian
guise; cringing in horror at real and imagined
revolutionary outrages while baying for the blood of
the uppity lower orders; finding its middlebrow
literary heroes in a dozen different Scarlet
Pimpernels and Doctor Zhivagos -- such is the dubious
legacy of this feral breed.
        Therefore it is far from shocking that such types
would resort to open international kidnapping, and
that they would justify the same not as some sort of
grim necessity, but as a positively moral exercise. So
what is the nature of the political forces behind the
effort to keep Elian Gonzalez from returning to his
father in Cuba, despite the latter's clear custody
rights under international law?
        There is ensconced in Miami a band of exiles who on
the whole are lighter of complexion and fatter in the
pocketbook than the average Cuban. In the old days,
when their puppet Fulgencio Batista was president of
Cuba, he was routinely denied admittance to their posh
country clubs because of his partially black ancestry.
        For forty years, these people have demanded that the
US government back their various attempts to reclaim
the plantations, casinos, and whorehouses of which
they were so cruelly dispossessed by the revolution.
And when the revolutionary government had the temerity
to wipe out illiteracy in Cuba, institute free basic
health care, and make a significant contribution to
the downfall of South African apartheid, the exiles
only became more determined in their opposition.
        The US government has been more than willing to
oblige. The counterrevolutionary exile cannot thrive
without that equally distasteful phenomenon, the
counterrevolutionary host country, itself fearful of
revolution and protective of the power of its own
elite.
        The results are familiar: innumerable assassination
attempts on Cuban leaders; countless acts of sabotage
including at least one case of CIA biological warfare
(a swine-fever epidemic); and above all, a crushing
40-year economic blockade designed to inflict maximum
deprivation.
        But the exile counterrevolutionaries' desire for
revenge is insatiable. In the view of these
self-styled Cuban "patriots," the Cuban people have
not suffered enough, and the United States cannot be
trusted to foment sufficient terror and destruction.
As proof of this, the exiles point to their Bay of
Pigs invasion of Cuba, where they flopped about
incompetently and were soundly defeated to the
profound delight of decent people everywhere. They
accuse then-President John Kennedy of "betraying" them
for not providing air cover to their mercenary band.
        US government officials know that the Cuban exiles
are indispensable for their purposes, but occasionally
they are exasperated by the exiles' over-enthusiasm.
Terrorism against Cuba is fine by the US government,
but it is expected to be kept away from US shores. The
exiles have been known to defy this understanding:
some of them once fired a bazooka at a Polish frigate
in the harbor at Miami; others helped blow up former
Chilean politician Orlando Letelier on the streets of
Washington, DC; still others participated in the
Watergate burglary at the behest of Richard Nixon.
        The loathsome spectacle before us is merely the
latest in a decades-old series of charades. Bill
Clinton -- under whose watch the embargo has been
tightened -- is no slouch when it comes to the US
tradition of punishing Cuba for having a government
which prefers building hospitals to building banks.
Yet even this Administration sees the manifest
stupidity in openly lending the legitimacy of the
government to a conspiracy to kidnap a six-year-old
boy.
        For their part, however, the exiles have pulled out
all the stops. In addition to wallowing in their
trademark self-pity -- a matter of course in their
everyday behavior to begin with -- they have made use
of all the politicians they've bought over the years.
A Catholic nun told the shameless lie that the boy's
grandmothers were being threatened by Castro, all in
return for a generous donation to the nun's college
from the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF),
the outfit of the late mafioso Jorge Mas Canosa.
        And they've showered the boy himself with gifts. You
really can't blame a child for taking a bribe. Yet if
the exiles succeed in getting US citizenship bestowed
upon him, bribe-taking at the age of six will have
instilled just the right values to make him a model
citizen of the country which permits people to get
away with such behavior.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com