The soapbox you're standing on is a bit wobbly, Chris. How much of a "victory" was this, really? Yes, I got a great rush of satisfaction from seeing the right-wing Cuban expats -- who have been ludicrously indulged for so many years and who virtually hijacked U.S.-Cuban policymaking -- humiliated at last. But I have grave misgivings, to say the least, about being in the cheering section for for a bunch of machine-gun-toting thugs in uniform conducting a pre-dawn raid with a battering ram.
I myself feel torn in two. I'm not sure how my emotions and thinking net out concerning this deeply disturbing episode. However, let me quote from Alexander Cockburn's column in NY Press this week:
"Last Saturday Chris Matthews was excitedly telling his MSNBC audience that the famous AP photo of the Elian snatch maybe proved 'the black helicopter crowd' might be right when they said America was turning into a police state.
"Welcome to America, Chris. Where have you been for the past 30 years? Don't you know that every day, somewhere here in the Land of the Free, squads of heavily armed men looking exactly like the fellow in the AP picture are bursting through someone's front door, screaming at the terrified occupants to lie face down on the floor, trashing the furniture, shooting the dog, running amok? It's standard operating procedure in drug busts, INS raids, some IRS operations, joint Fed/local cop arrests, etc., etc. Nearly 90% of police departments with a population of 50,000 maintain SWAT teams.
"It's doubly hallucinating to hear Mayor Giuliani denouncing the Elian snatch as the work of 'Nazi storm troopers' when one remembers he was a high-up in the Justice Department in the Reagan years, as the militarization of law enforcement (under the rationale of waging the 'drug war') was proceeding full-bore under his supervision. In consequence, killings by cop squads have been going up steadily. Remember what happened to that millionaire, Don Scott, outside Los Angeles? A snitch told the cops Scott had marijuana plants on his property. They raided the property in full force, and when Scott came out of his bedroom with a gun, thinking to fight off intruders, they killed him. Probably in the region of a standard delivery package of 42 shots."
Carl ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com