Just for the record, they weren't my personal experiences, they were the personal experiences of the generation before mine. I didn't know personally anyone who was killed, I do know some people who managed to flee, making it either to the States, to Brazil and to Argentina, and a few who got numbers tatooed on their arms and only were able to speak of it in the last 10 years or so.
The comparison is still offensive to me emotionally, and, frankly and without meaning to offend you personally on it, absurd intellectually. If the government was "proving who has the power", they had ample opportunity to do so in the months preceding the raid. If anything, they waited way too long, pandering to Cuban American sentiment. Someone on another thread posted a list of the bombings and murders linked to anti-Castro Cuban Americans, I don't recall the thread, sorry, but there have been many of them over the years, including many this decade. The show of force, IMO was unhappily necessary because the INS couldn't know what or who was in the crowd or the house. The tape showed that the agents waited for 30 seconds before entering the house. Agreed, there was confusion in the house, and the delay was in some ways understandable. But it is a sick joke for politicians like Rudy G. to on the one hand defend the police for repeatedly killing outnumbered, unarmed civilians in NYC and then come down hard on the INS for their tactics in this case. In this case, the INS was facing an unknown but potentially dangerous situation--even if we grant that the family had no violent intentions themselves (which may or may not be the case--Lazarro was running around saying after the raid that if he had had a gun, things would have been different--thank God he didn't have a gun!).
You're right, of course, the Asian thread is not the place to have this conversation, but I've just read too many comparisons to the Gestapo to let them all pass. I'll let you have the last word (if you want it), and will let the subject die here.
Sam |
