Elián!

Pro-War.Com's greatest disappointment is that we weren't around for the Elián saga, which was, hands down, the funniest crisis this country has had in a generation. It was a gut-busting pleasure to watch conservatives come up justifications for what was, after all the crying and shouting died down, a kidnapping.

It also inspired the single greatest piece of wingnut journalism ... ever.

And some of us, in our sadness, wonder what Ronald Reagan, our last great president, would have done. I think I know.

The burden of proof would have been on the communists, not the Americans; he would have sent someone he trusted to the family and found out the facts; seeing the boy had bonded with the cousin he would have negotiated with Mr. Castro to get the father here, and given him whatever he could that would not harm our country.

Mr. Reagan would not have dismissed the story of the dolphins as Christian kitsch, but seen it as possible evidence of the reasonable assumption that God’s creatures had been commanded to protect one of God’s children. And most important, the idea that he would fear Mr. Castro, that he would be afraid of a tired old tyrant in faded fatigues, would actually have made him laugh. Mr. Reagan would fear only what kind of country we would be if we took the little boy and threw him over the side, into the rough sea of history.

He would have made a statement laying out the facts and ended it, “The boy stays, the dream endures, the American story continues. And if Mr. Castro doesn’t like it, well, I’m afraid that’s really too bad.”

But then he was a man.

Once again, that's "the reasonable assumption that God’s creatures had been commanded to protect one of God’s children."

Hence, Peggy "Our Lady of the Dolphins" Noonan. Reasonable.

But Elián is back in the news, and for that Pro-War.Com gives thanks.

In a civil trial that began Monday in federal court here, 13 plaintiffs are seeking up to $250,000 each in damages, charging that agents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service unnecessarily sprayed them with tear gas at close range, shoved, cursed and traumatized them in their zeal to remove Elián without a struggle. Government witnesses have testified that the officers used only appropriate and necessary force as they made their way through a gantlet of furious protesters to reach Elián.

...

The suit, filed in 2003, originally had more than 100 plaintiffs, but most were dropped after Judge K. Michael Moore of United States District Court ruled that only people who stayed off the Gonzalez property and behind the barricades that morning were eligible.

...

Donato Dalrymple, who found Elián drifting at sea during a fishing trip, was originally a plaintiff in the suit being heard this week. But he was dropped because he was inside the Gonzalez house during the raid. Mr. Dalrymple famously hid with Elián in a closet, then tried to hold on to the screaming boy as an armed agent pulled him away.

Ms. Santos, 69, who lives two doors down from the Gonzalez house, said she was not sure how she would spend any money won in the suit. She is just happy to be involved, she said, even if testifying was her most unnerving experience since the raid.

"I have my right," she said. "And if I have my right, why not take advantage of it?"

Congratulations, Ms. Santos. With your zealous pursuit of frivolous litigation, you show yourself to be fully assimilated.

You are truly an American.

Hi. I saved Elián, which means Peggy Noonan likes me. But at night I cavort with SpongeBob, and you know what that means....