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United Nations -- Not long ago, President Bill Clinton, exhibiting faux emotion let it slip -- the continuing custody case of the Cuban boatboy Elian Gonzalez "had now become political." Really. Since the six year old child was rescued from the perilous waters of the Florida Straits on Thanksgiving Day, the case was political and clearly less about Elian's welfare than the 25 electoral votes Florida can deliver or deny to candidates in the November election.
Even if it were not a Presidential election year, Elian would still be held hostage to the emotions and meddling of all sides in this ongoing political Circus. His mother having perished while fleeing from communist Cuba, is not here to speak for him.
As I have clearly stated before, if the case involved returning Elian to Canada, Chile, or Costa Rica the path would be more clear cut; returning him to Castro is quite another matter as Cuba remains the hemisphere's most repressive regime. Such stark and compelling evidence confronts the USA, a nation which prides itself as offering political refuge to those legitimately seeking it.
The tawdry soap opera continues. That's why the judicial dirty work is being performed by dour and dutiful Attorney General Janet Reno. While the Attorney General has tried to handle this "under the law of the land," the end result will be sending Elian back to an island where the rule of law is at Fidel's whim.
From the start, the matter was treated as an immigration issue and not a custody case. It should be resolved in family court and not played out as a shameless spectacle.
I would hope the saga will end in the proverbial photo finish -- when the moment of truth comes and Elian meets his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez and his new wife then ask for political asylum in America. Yet, I have been advised by good sources that the baby brought here by the Gonzalez family from Cuba is not theirs but a "surrogate stand-in" their real child still being held for safe-keeping in Castro's Cuba, just in case anyone decides to defect.
Should the U.S. forcibly return Elian to the tender care of Castro's Cuba, I'm certain that Fidel will at least initially treat the child as a returning hero of the socialist revolution, a paragon of proletarian virtue. Castro will revel in having beaten the gringos at their own game using the gringo law!
During the Elian case I have been shocked by the media's moral relativism in viewing the Marxist island. We rarely hear of the Cuban dictator or even leader but rather of President Castro or the Castro Administration, the subtle nuance being that they are really "just like us." It's the Cuban Americans who are crudely castigated as being "firebrand, radical, and emotional and uncompromising."
I was equally aghast when American "experts" viewing the admittedly staged Elian Video tape of the boy sitting on his bed and didactically wagging his finger did not comprehend that he is a product of the Cuban system -- Fidel speaks for hours in this manner, the rehearsed companeros in his school all speak with this self assurance and little Elian is exhibiting precisely the symptoms of the militant training of the Cuban State to whom we wish to return him.
Ironically during this endgame phase of the Elian saga, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was coincidentally in Havana for a Third World Summit. During a visit to the Jose Marti School, the little red kerchiefed children gave the Secretary General a tour of this "typical Cuban school." Will Elian become a red kerchief militant companero or be allowed to remain a happy nino in "Little Havana"?
In the end, Washington's judicial might will triumph over the anguished crowds in "Little Havana," Miami. The Clinton Administration will present his return to Cuba as upholding the rule of law and as a victory "for the children." But as Elian is on the side of the angels, he too will triumph someday in a free Cuba. Viva Cuba Libre!
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
