It Takes A Swat Team
to Raise a Child
by Nicholas Stix

May 2, 2000 
On the alternative press message board at townhall.com, a gentleman with some special weapons and tactics experience was writing. "Am I crazy?" he asked, regarding his thoughts on the sundry crimes (home invasion, assaults on two journalists and various vigil-keepers) committed by the INS SWAT team in Miami on Holy Saturday. Writing under the handle, "Niceguy," the correspondent maintained that in such an operation, the team members always have a plan regarding whom they will shoot, if the going gets tough. Niceguy suggested the SWAT team might have shot little Elian. Niceguy, you're not crazy. Or if you are crazy, so am I (a point on which my wife will heartily concur). However, I doubt the SWAT team planned on killing Elian under any circumstances. Uncle Lazaro, maybe, but not the child. 
 
The role of Castro-Clinton lawyer Gregory Craig is perhaps the darkest in the whole Elian-SWAT team story. Here was a civilian who, in his role as fixer for both the elected and the revolutionary despot, respectively, had clearly been granted access to executive discussions and decisions in advance. It was Craig who, hours before the SWAT team attack, had contacted all of the major news organizations, asking them not to cover the home invasion. Was Craig's initiating of contact with the TV networks an act of incredible hubris on his part, in thinking he could dictate a media blackout, or was he acting on Bill Clinton's behalf, in order to preserve the latter's plausible deniability? In any event, methinks that only a modest amount of scrutiny of this Craig character will discover deeply ingrained traces of dirt and blood on his hands and under his fingernails, from a whole host of previous fixerish escapades. 
 
I wonder how much of the Miami mess was the result of having a president who only understood para/military matters from a TV/movie-spectator's view. Call me sentimental, but I can't help thinking that in approaching the same situation, a veteran of close combat such as Pres. Bush Sr. (air) or Bob Dole (ground) would have had a greater sense of delicacy, while maintining a steely resolve. Lack of military experience notwithstanding, I think that when the historical record is published -- if it ever is -- we will see that next to MacClinton and Lady Hillary's ruthlessness, my beloved Trickster and Jack Kennedy were nothing but a couple of pikers. I doubt that even the alternative press knows the half of it. 
 
In terms of family law, I have to contradict Uncle Lazaro's lawyers and supporters, not to mention wannabe Solon, Alan Dershowitz. A six-year-old child's opinion has no standing, and any judge who thinks otherwise ought to hand in his robe. I worked for a couple of years on child custody/foster-care/adoption cases as a caseworker, routinely drawing up discharge plans and testifying in family court as to children's best interests. I know first-hand that as far as custody is concerned, a child that young does not have a mind to make up. Ask him what flavor of ice cream he prefers, and whether he'd like black sneakers or blue, but not where he'd prefer to live. Communist or no, Juan Miguel is the only surviving relative fit to speak for Elian. The Miami relatives are simply too distant to have standing. 
 
The case was complicated by the fact that the Berlin Wall analogy didn't work. The mother wasn't fleeing to freedom, but rather out of passion to live with her boyfriend. The corporate media did cheat, though, by refusing to report that Juan Miguel had called the Miami relatives, and asked them to take care of Elian. 
 
And yet, Steve Largent's NYTimes op-ed two weeks ago said it best: If you're pro-family, you're pro-family. The longer the child had stayed with his great-uncle, the more screwed up he would have become. For me, the issue remained one of communism vs. democracy only so long as Juan Miguel stayed in Cuba. And I had expected him to stay in Havana. But the moment Juan Miguel Gonzalez stepped off the plane at Dulles Airport, the custody issue became moot. There's no due process for six-year-olds in custody battles. 
 
With that said, a basic principle of child welfare and family court, is that one does not remove a child from a home at the end of a submachine gun. 
 
I keep coming back to the media's role in the Clinton saga. Not to downplay what MacClinton and Lady Hillary have wrought. At first, I didn't believe the picture from the bedroom. I thought for sure, it was doctored, as part of some Clinton-bashing joke. The "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child" Clintons wouldn't send in submachine guns, would they?! Once I realized the "It Takes a Submachine Gun to Raise a Child" Clintons not only could, but did send in the clowns, I reflected on their respective rap sheets, and was shocked, but no longer surprised. 
 
But in many ways, I am angrier at the media than I am at B & H. After all, as sociopaths and career politicians (or am I being redundant?), they are simply being who they are. But when the media aid and abet them, it is akin to a policeman aiding and abetting a criminal. Forgive my naivete, but the media are supposed to police these characters! 
 
And I am counting pollster John Zogby as part of the media. My mother is a diehard Clintonite, yet not even she believes that 65 percent (vs. 32 opposed, says Zogby) of the country supported the SWAT team home invasion. Maybe 65 percent of Manhattan supported it, but that's only if you don't call up any local homes with Spanish surnames. Surely, 65 percent of Yupper West Side communists supported the home invasion, assaults, and First Amendment violations. 
 
For the media's culpability, consider that although Lady Hillary's Secret Service detail assaulted six journalists at New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade in March (see the story, "Hillary & Her Goons," at www.bcity.com/stixandstones), no major news organization would cover the story. The media bosses helped Lady Hillary on St. Patty's Day -- even to the point of sacrificing their own journalists! -- they've been helping her in her campaign against Rudy Giuliani since early 1999, and they've been doing yeoman work in helping her and MacClinton cut their losses from Miami. 
 
Only NBC had the cojones to protest the INS assaults on its cameraman, Tony Zumbado, and soundman, Gustavo Moller, at Lazaro Gonzalez' house. Meanwhile, check out the response by AP cameraman Alan Diaz' "peers" to his coup.  
 
(Diaz shot THE PICTURE. It was probably the most important shot in the past ten years. For raw, emotional power, the only pic I know that compares with it is the August, 1961 shot of an East German soldier, deserting his post guarding the building of the Berlin Wall, to run for freedom.) 
 
Diaz' peers have refused to name him. And when they do refer, namelessly, to "the picture," as the Daily News' Jim Dwyer did on Easter Sunday, it is to impugn Diaz' character. The once-great Dwyer claimed that rather than having hopped a fence and run into the house, as Diaz claims to have done when he saw the SWAT team vans approaching, "In fact, the pictures were taken only because the moment had been five months building -- and the relatives inside the house had brought in The Associated Press to capture the drama they helped stage. 
 
How could the family have invited Alan Diaz into the house, much less into that particular bedroom, when they had had no foreknowledge of the SWAT team action? This sounds like a damage-control story put out after the fact. The only question is, did Dwyer, who makes no attempt to hide his hatred of Rudy Giuliani, and who has done everything in his considerable power to help Lady Hillary win the New York senate race, come up with this cover story on his own, or did he get a call or a fax with "talking points" from Gregory Craig or someone else at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? 
 
In the same day's Daily News, politically correct TV reporter David Bianculli managed to devote an entire article to "the still photo of an armed federal agent about to wrest a little boy from the arms of a protective adult," without once mentioning who had taken the picture, or under what circumstances. Bianculli praised CBS anchor Dan Rather for "refusing to speculate of offer his analysis" -- i.e., for refusing to do his job -- while criticizing NBC for its refusal to toe the party line. 
"Over at MSNBC, anchor Brian Williams spent much of the morning and afternoon taking a dim view of the raid and seeming to inflame the issue -- at one point calling the photo "an extremely damaging image." Duh! What could possibly have caused him to do that? Williams must be part of the vast, right-wing conspiracy!  
 
But it gets better. In the same edition, the Daily News ran one of Alan Diaz' AP pix, renaming him "Al Daiz." How petty can you get? Or am I just paranoid? 
 
 
Copyright (c)2000 Nicholas Stix 
 
For more powerful news & commentary by the same author, see the other articles at the this site, and hit the link below to ADD's sister site, Stix & Stones. Then you'll want to hit the other links below to Toogood Reports, richardpoe.com, and the Ring of Conservative Websites on my home page. Enjoy! 
 
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