At 5 a.m. on Saturday, April 22, U.S. marshals took custody of Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives with rifles drawn.

While this case has been dragging on for far too long and Elian should have been back with his father months ago, the manner in which this exchange took place was overkill — plain and simple.

Elian’s Miami relatives were dragging their feet, of that there can be no doubt. Their attempts at negotiation were transparent stalling tactics that made the process look and feel more like a hostage negotiation than a reasonable exchange between caring relatives and a government agency caught between a rock and a hard place.

Under normal circumstances, a social worker would have shown up at the door with a sheriff’s deputy in tow just in case. So why did this raid have to go down more like Waco than the typical social services exchange?

If a dozen agents had gone into the house calmly wearing their bullet proof vests under the clothes and kept their pistols holstered until necessary instead of marching in like stormtroopers with MP5s pointed at the boy they were supposedly sent to be rescue, would things have gone much differently?

Certainly the opportunity for embarrassing photos would have been eliminated.

So would the level of trauma for little Elian.

Some might argue that the marshals were only following the procedures set down for a typical raid of this nature.

But this was no typical raid.

Given the high profile of the case and the extremely unlikely possibility that the relatives were going to barricade themselves behind sandbags with rocket launchers, perhaps a special plan could have been made.

Are we not supposed to be the good guys?

Have we so completely given up on the notion of doing what is right that we now go into every situation armed to the teeth, ready to do as much damage to the opposition as we are to our own reputations?

International law and U.S. law were clear about who Elian belonged with — his father.

Then politics entered into the picture and we hesitated just long enough to have to cover up for our hesitation.

We let politicians convince us of their sincerity by questioning the rights of a parent.

We should be ashamed.

Hopefully, there will not be a next time, but there always is.

And hopefully next time our jackbooted friends in the government can find a less draconian way to carry out their orders.

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Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Sara Ziegler, Greg Jerrett, Kate Kompas, Carrie Tett and David Roepke.