PHONY DEFENDERS OF CIVIL LIBERTIES

Republicans foraging for political nourishment in the government's recovery
of Elian Gonzalez are engaging in the most transparent hypocrisy we've seen
in a long time.

The family values, law-and-order set has done a complete turnaround when it
comes to a Cuban boy. Those slamming Attorney General Janet Reno and
President Clinton are the same people who natter about the sanctity of the
parent-child relationship and who have been behind the massive buildup of
paramilitary police throughout the country.

They support the use of overwhelming force to patrol drug-infested urban
areas and to serve search warrants on drug suspects.

What we saw occur in that house in Little Havana on Saturday happens every
night in this country, with two critical differences. First, when
paramilitary units serve drug warrants, they are invading the homes of
people who have a constitutional right to be presumed innocent until proven
guilty. The Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez were not innocent: They were
defying the law and showed no sign of behaving like responsible citizens.
The second important difference is that the federal agents carried off
Elian's recovery under the glare of a world spotlight and conducted a
by-the-book surgical strike.

Unlike recent police performances in New York City, no one got killed in
Little Havana. And no one was going to get shot or killed by the federal
agent who, in the famous photo, was pointing his weapon away from Elian.
For critics of the operation to continue talking about a gun being pointed
at the boy is the height of irresponsibility. It shows a contempt for the
American public that will do the Republicans and their spinmeisters no good.

Nor will their spiteful criticism of Reno. "Why was force used?" asked
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.). "Wasn't there a more peaceful
answer?"

If he had a better solution, he should have picked up the phone.

One can't help but wonder whether the critics who say Reno should have
continued negotiations would have had the surfeit of patience she
demonstrated. It's a good bet that had this been, say, a Haitian child, the
law-and-order folks would have raided the place weeks ago, and none of us
would have even known it was happening.

Unlike the Republican opportunists who are trying to turn this into an
election year circus, most Americans understand that it is the Miami
relatives who defied the law who are at fault.

Whatever credibility the Miami Cuban community might have had--never much
among those familiar with conditions in pre-Castro Cuba - got squandered by
the dreadful behavior of Elian's relatives.

These are tough times in Cuba, primarily because the United States is
continuing its pigheaded embargo instead of normalizing relations with
President Fidel Castro. But children such as Elian now have access to
health care and education - which they couldn't have had in pre-Castro days
unless their sisters worked in tourist brothels.

For Republicans to bleat about excessive force boggles the mind. These are
the folks who vote billions of dollars for the so-called war on drugs,
which includes middle-of-the-night raids on private homes, with children
inside them, and the seizure and forfeiture of drug suspects' property,
even if the suspects are never convicted.

"What you see in the Elian case is standard operating procedure in drug
cases," says Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center, which is
funded by financier George Soros to develop more effective drug policies
than the ones we now have. "Every year, this happens tens of thousands of
times where one member of a family may be suspected of drug dealing,
including marijuana, and you have people screaming and kids present.

The photos not being seen are the tens of thousands of children exposed to
this when law enforcement shows up to arrest the parents or big brothers
for suspected involvement in drugs."

Nearly 90 percent of police departments have paramilitary units, and 46
percent of them have been trained by active-duty armed forces personnel,
according to a study by Peter B. Kraska and Victor E. Kappeler, who teach
criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky University. By the early 1990s, most
branches of the military and national guard were becoming involved in
drug-law enforcement, both domestically and internationally, they wrote in
the February 1997 issue of the journal Social Problems. The use of these
units grew tenfold during the '90s, and three-quarters of their assignments
were to serve drug-related warrants, which usually involve no-knock entries
into private homes.

The militarization of police has been fueled by several factors: federal
grants; surplus military equipment, including armored personnel carriers,
that have gone to local police departments; and the seizure laws, which
allow police departments to keep whatever property they take from drug
suspects and then sell it to finance further police operations. These
paramilitary units become highly visible when an operation goes bad and
innocent people are killed, but they are out there every night, in full
tactical gear, heavily armed, busting down doors, throwing suspects on the
floor, terrifying children and demonstrating that the most basic civil
liberties have been the biggest casualties in the war on drugs.

Despite polls showing that a majority of Americans support Reno's action in
the Elian case, House and Senate Republicans are making noises about
holding hearings on the raid, focusing on the use of force.

Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee,
said the panel should investigate what he called "an increasing pattern of
force - excessive force" by the administration in dealing with the public.
Given what we know happens in drug raids, that might be a very good idea.
But I don't think that's what he has in mind.