The Clinton administration's complete disregard for this real significance of the Elian case is just one more indication of its refusal to acknowledge basic moral reality. Its contempt for the resolve of the Cuban exile community to keep Elian in freedom speaks volumes. We got a glimpse of that danger in the picture of the storm trooper seizing Elian from those whose only crime was loving him too much to send him back to tyranny. Blind to the moral issues involved in the Elian case, Clinton and Reno apparently tired of the civilized processes of legal dispute and argument and implemented instead their own version of Castroite thuggery against citizens of the United States. As even many liberals have managed to notice, the unconstitutionality of a federal raid on a private and lawful home, to seize a person accused of nothing, is so obvious and complete that it is difficult to think of a more blatantly tyrannical act.
Several reasons suggest themselves.
It is, of course, not surprising that an administration that has been so eager to please communists around the world would eventually take action to please Fidel Castro. Also, I believe that they understand the long term anesthetizing value of violent precedents that accustom Americans to the fact that we are no longer the free people we once were. Finally, as at Waco, at a certain point the Clintons lost patience with the pretense of caring about coming to agreement with others and simply looked around to see what means were available to take what they wanted. The Elian Easter Raid had the classic Clinton marks of incompetence and nascent tyranny. Lacking competence, heart, imagination and discernment, the Clinton team threw up its hands at the complexity of a human moral dilemma.