That it took so long to sort through the "who'' issue of Elian's custody is evidence of the political power of a well-positioned voting bloc. Period. While George W. Bush, Al Gore and their cynical allies in Congress abandoned principle and common sense in a pathetic grab for electoral pre-eminence in Dade County, the rest of America shook its head in stunned disbelief.

--From the start, polls showed that the American people wanted Elian to go home to his family in Cuba. Indeed, polls in Florida showed that even in the charged environment of that state, most citizens had a hard time figuring out why what should have been a simple custody matter blew up into an international incident.

The answer, of course, was that the Miami Cuban activists and their conservative allies were playing out one last battle in a Cold War that ended more than a decade ago. Like those sad Japanese soldiers who hid in the jungles for decades after the end of World War II, America's cold warriors simply refuse to acknowledge that the fight is finished.

The cold warriors made a bad miscalculation when they decided to turn a little boy into a weapon in their long-finished war, however. The absurdity of their stance regarding Cuba -- a nation that poses no threat to the United States, and has done a better job than many developing countries in caring for its children -- was exposed as never before. And they lost -- not just in the courts of law, but in the court of public opinion.

© 2000 The Capital Times

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