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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Barracuda™ who wrote (2456)	4/25/2000 9:58:00 AM
From: art slott	Respond to of 9127

When did he become a Republican? LOL Just kidding. Not all Repubs. are corrupt. At least not all the time.

To: The Barracuda™ who wrote (2456)	4/25/2000 9:59:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9127

April 25, 2000 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Who Else Wants to Give Bill Clinton a Sucker Punch? By GEORGE MELLOAN William Jefferson Clinton wanted to make it clear that it was Janet Reno's decision to resort to Gestapo tactics last weekend in the Elian Gonzalez case. But he "backs" what she did, for whatever that's worth. Ms. Reno also was allowed to take most of the heat for "her own" decision to order an FBI attack on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, in 1993 that culminated in an inferno that left 80 dead. Mr. Clinton seems to be a great believer in delegation of decision-making authority. At least no one was killed in the weekend raid on a small home in Miami's Little Havana, although TV footage showed police later beating a protestor in much the same manner that Los Angeles cops subdued a defiant motorist named Rodney King a few years back. It will be interesting to see if Mr. Clinton still backs Ms. Reno if courts find that immigration cops violated the law when they busted into the Gonzalez home in Miami. But he might. After all, what's so new about law violations by this administration? Yet as abhorrent as the behavior of the Clinton gang has been in the Gonzalez case and as tragic the plight of little Elian, bigger issues stem from this wrenching abuse of state power. It came about because a vicious, small-time Caribbean dictator, Fidel Castro, was able to bend the president of the United States to his will. The armed assault on innocent civilians was right out of the Castro playbook on repression. The larger question is: How many more tough guys around the world will be able to take advantage of this president before he leaves office? Mr. Clinton's favorite method of dealing with hard-nosed regimes is appeasement, and it has failed time and again. He tried to buy North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il out of the nuclear arms business but recent evidence suggests that North Korea still has the means to produce bombs, possibly with Western-supplied reactors. He has sought to make Yasser Arafat and Syrian dictator Hafez Assad happy by bullying Israel into offering up more and more "land for peace," only to see their demands grow. He coaxed the Serbian thug Slobodan Milosevic into signing the Dayton Accord, which Slobo was most happy to do at a point when he was losing the war. But after letting Mr. Clinton enjoy his photo-op, the thus-emboldened Slav began savaging Kosovo, ultimately provoking retaliatory bombing. China has been similarly encouraged by Mr. Clinton's ambivalence toward Taiwan, stepping up its threats against that small, democratic de facto state and raising the volume on its warnings to the U.S. to butt out. There is now a danger of a Chinese miscalculation of U.S. resolve to uphold its longstanding policy of insisting that China must not use force to bring Taiwan under Beijing's control. So it was not at all surprising when the administration buckled under to Castro when he demanded that tiny Elian, survivor of an ill-fated attempt to escape the island prison, be returned to Cuba. Through it all the administration has insisted on acting as if Cuba is a normal country and Elian's father is free to act and speak as he chooses. But then, appeasement is a delicate art, and seemed to be succeeding until the world saw an image of little Elian cowering in fear before a helmeted cop brandishing an automatic weapon. So who will be the next tough guy to try on this weak-kneed president for size? A very good candidate for that role is the newly elected president of Russia, ex-KGB man Vladimir Putin. He no doubt noticed that Mr. Clinton, who frequently blubbers about his love and concern for the "little people," chose not to make an issue of the Russian army's slaughter of the "little people" in Chechnya, even after some commentators were uttering that dreaded word "genocide." Even the Council of Europe, never known for its defense of moral principles, has taken a tougher stand on Chechnya than the Clinton administration. As columnist Charles Krauthammer noted last week, the most probable test Mr. Putin is arranging for Mr. Clinton has to do with nuclear missiles. To set up the American president, Mr. Putin had the Russian parliament ratify the Start II nuclear arms reduction treaty this month, ending years of delay. Then to top that off the Duma, or lower house, also approved the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which Congress had wisely refused to ratify. The Russians have made it clear for some time now that the price tag for this new accommodationist approach will be continued U.S. adherence to a 1972 ABM Treaty with the old Soviet Union in which both sides agreed to forego national missile defense. The idea behind the 1972 deal was that missile defense would destabilize the balance of terror between the two Cold War enemies. But the world has changed since 1972. For one thing, the U.S.S.R. no longer exists, removing whatever legal binding power the treaty once had. For another, Russia is no longer the only country capable of threatening the U.S. or its allies with nuclear missiles. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, yet another failed attempt to control power politics with pen and ink, has not prevented the spread of nuclear arms. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was developing a serious nuclear threat before the Gulf War, demonstrating that nuclear terror is not out of the reach of even small rogue nations. China has boasted that it can hit the U.S. with a missile. The U.S. has no protection against such an attack. Mr. Putin knows that Russia cannot field its own missile defense system in its current state of impecunious disarray. So the alternative is to see if Mr. Clinton will be as easy a pushover on this issue as he has been for Fidel Castro's brilliant stroke of using a father-and-son relationship as a tool for working his will on the hated Yankees. Bill Clinton played into his hands as expected and the world last weekend witnessed a scene that suggests that the U.S. government is no more observant of human rights than the government of Fidel Castro. Appeasement of small-timers like Fidel or Slobo is merely disgusting. But how Mr. Clinton handles China and Russia, two nations capable of harming the U.S., is a very serious matter. The world-wide image of the U.S. already has been damaged by the multiple scandals of this administration. It might be convenient at the moment for Mr. Clinton to hide behind Janet Reno's skirts, but that cannot shield him from diminishing world-wide respect and a sense of dismay over the scene we have just witnessed. interactive.wsj.com