Especially the famous photo of an officer who seems to be pointing an uzi at Elian himself. We ve had enough of military style assaults to save the children to know that this could have gone terribly wrong. The analogy to Waco can be pressed too far. Whatever it was the Branch Davidians were up to at Mount Carmel, the children living in their compound were their own children. The situation would have been far different if they had a bunch of children whose parents were demanding their release.
Some folks seem upset that force was used at all.
But no decent father would allow his son to be held in a foreign land by his nation s enemies. Perhaps the most plausible justification for the existence of government is that it allows us to avoid resorting to this sort of private self-help to resolve disputes. Unless we re anarchists we cannot say that the government should not have stepped in. But even if we are anarchists, we cannot say that force should not have been employed. One way or the other someone was going to go after Elian.