Clinton Legacy Watch #46: The Sacrifice of Elian to Appease Castro Takes the Practice of Moral Equivalence to New Low

(Washington, D.C.): It speaks volumes about the Clinton Administration’s stewardship of foreign policy that the only initiatives that it seems to pursue with determination and steadfastness are the ill-considered, misbegotten and/or morally reprehensible ones. The latest of these — in a long list that includes: the appeasement of China and North Korea; the coercion of Israel; the reckless export of strategic technologies; the compromise (perhaps with “extreme prejudice”) of sources and methods through the wanton “sharing” of U.S. intelligence; the overextension and squandering of defense resources in dubious peacekeeping and humanitarian operations around the world; ignoring, and thereby compounding, the dangers associated with, the true corrupt and devious nature of successive Russian regimes — is in a way the most easily understood: The Clinton-Gore team’s unwavering determination to deny Elian Gonzales an opportunity to grow up in freedom by forcing his expedited return to Communist Cuba.

It should be a sufficient indictment of Messrs. Clinton and Gore that they would permit such a policy to be promulgated in their names. After all, it signals their inability — or, at least, their unwillingness — to repudiate the sort of moral equivalence from which this action springs. In so doing, they betray two of the most fundamental principles of the American founding, namely the inalienable right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness by suggesting that it matters not a whit to the well-being of a child whether he (or she) is raised under a totalitarian regime.

It adds to the ignominy of the Clinton-Gore Administration’s effort to force the repatriation of six-year-old Elian that it has made no perceptible effort to insist that his father be allowed to come to this country and make a free decision as to whether or not he wishes to return with the child to Cuba. The fact that Fidel is preventing such a trip and refuses to afford Elian’s dad the physical and familial latitude needed to exercise a free choice only serves to underscore the utter insincerity of Castro’s claims to have only the best interests of the child at heart.

What Does It Say About Us?

Perhaps the most odious aspect of this sordid affair, however, is what its denouement says about the insidious effect the Clinton-Gore Administration has had on the American people’s appreciation of the abiding malevolence of totalitarian regimes like Castro’s. They have been systematically led to believe that there is no despot on the planet (with the possible and certainly temporary exception of Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic) with whom the United States cannot responsibly do business. They have been lied to both about the true intentions and the capabilities of these rulers and their regimes to do us harm. And they have been encouraged to believe that there is no fundamental moral or other difference between political systems that depend upon the repression of their people’s rights and those that are rooted in respect for the liberty of their citizens.

The Bottom Line

If the Clinton-Gore Administration succeeds in the next few days, or weeks, in compelling the return of young Elian to Castro’s gulag of a country, it will be more than a black mark against its already dismal record. It will be a tangible manifestation of the extent to which the moral decay exhibited and promoted by the Administration’s principals has metastasized among the U.S. population at large.