Spring 2000

Page B-6

Those who wanted the boy sent back to Cuba even before his father showed up to claim him, generally believed that the coverage was excessive and that it fueled the opposition to what they thought was best for the child and for the country.

There is no question but that any child would be far better off growing up in the United States than in Cuba, or in many other countries in the world. This is not just a matter of the high living standards and better career opportunities this country offers.

It is a matter of kids not being brainwashed by Communist teachers and having to live in a country where they have no freedom of speech, press, religion, privacy, association and travel.

One of the great flaws in the media coverage of the Elian case was the failure to use this as an opportunity to better inform Americans about the Stalinist dictatorship 90 miles off our coast.

Castro has enjoyed a remarkably good press in this country for a tyrant with such an abysmal record of failure. He has failed in everything except hanging on to power for 41 years without ever daring to allow his miserable subjects to vote for or against him.

For over a year our media carried numerous stories about a Spanish effort to prosecute former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet, for alleged crimes against humanity, murder and genocide. Pinochet, who when arrested was 83 years old and in poor health, was being hounded for leading a military coup in 1972 that saved Chile from an emerging Communist dictatorship backed by Castro.

It was a coup that had the sanction of Chile's parliament, which was alarmed by the illegal enhancement of the power of Salvador Allende, the Socialist president who had won a three-way race for president with 37 percent of the vote. But it was not bloodless. Allende committed suicide and some 3,000 of his supporters were killed.

Overthrowing Allende was important, but Gen. Pinochet's legacy is far greater than that. Under his presidency, Chile was transformed from a socialist state perpetually burdened with hyper-inflation to a thriving free-market economy with high growth, low inflation and a stable currency. It has become a model for other countries in South America and elsewhere.

Pinochet is regularly referred to in our media as a dictator and a violator of human rights. He was arrested while on a visit to London in October, 1998, and held under house arrest for over a year on charges lodged by a Spanish prosecutor who wanted to see him punished for some of those 3,000 deaths in the 1972 coup.

Castro, on the other hand, is called "president" by journalists like Dan Rather, never "dictator." He has sponsored subversion and terrorism throughout the world, including an attempt to assassinate Pinochet in 1986.

Cuban scholar Armando Lago says that Castro is responsible for the deaths of over 118,000 Cubans, including political executions, extrajudicial killings, over 86,000 who died trying to escape by sea and 10,000 who died fighting in Angola. Ironically, Castro, the murderer, was in Spain when the arrest of Pinochet in London was announced. It was Castro, not Pinochet, that the Spanish judge should have had arrested.

Our media overlooked a great opportunity to inform and remind Americans of Castro's crimes, not only his killings and support of subversion, but his crime of enslaving and impoverishing the Cuban people.

They should have reminded America that Castro's air force on July 26, 1996, shot down two civilian, unarmed planes in international airspace, killing three Americans. The planes were part of the "Brothers to the Rescue" humanitarian campaign on behalf of refugees from Cuba.

Frank Calzon points out that Attorney General Janet Reno has in her possession the evidence necessary to issue a murder indictment of the Cuban officials who authorized the shootdown, but she has so far refused, and the silence of our media is deafening.