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View From A Vet: Panama Invasion

By Pete Zastrow

Pete Zastrow, VVAW National Office

Panama has almost disappeared form the nightly news. It requires serious searching to find an article in a weekly newsmagazine where Panama is mentioned. It's almost hard to remember that, not so many months ago, the U.S. military was mobilized to invade that country. Or that, for several years before that, Panama was high on the list of the U.S. public enemies, somehow meriting a choking economic boycott where no U.S. concern could do business which contributed taxes to the government of Panama.

It is worthwhile to look at stripped-bare facts. The U.S. invaded Panama, an independent country. The U.S. used all the military power necessary to conquer this independent country. The U.S. took the head of government from his country, brought him to the U.S. and holds him as a prisoner of war in a U.S. prison. Neither the people nor the government of Panama had done anything to the U.S. to justify an invasion. After the invasion the U.S. installed a government of its own choosing to run the country.

If the Soviet Union dealt with Lithuania, or countries in Eastern Europe, in a similar fashion the U.S. government would be screeching to the skies about barbarism, godless communism, etc, etc.

General Noriega, alleged drug trafficker whose supposed crimes provided a major justification for the U.S. invasion has almost dropped from sight. It seems likely that he was extravagantly supported by the CIA which happily overlooked his activities; it is clear that he was extravagantly supported in his political career by the U.S. government until he refused to toe the U.S. line concerning Nicaragua. When that happened not only did Noriega abruptly became a most-wanted criminal, but his country became the target of a massive U.S. campaign of economic sanctions. When I was in Panama at the end of November, government officials told us that the Gross National Product had fallen by over 40% as a result of U.S. interface.

In retrospect, Noriega was never an important part of the U.S. invasion plan; he was merely a vital excuse for what the Bush Administration had decided to do. That's why we hear so little about Noriega now; the invasion is over, Bush did what he wanted to do. As far as the U.S. government is concerned, Noriega can rot in prison.

At the very end of the year 1999, by treaty the Panama Canal will become Panamanian. The U.S. will lose control over the Canal and over the Canal Zone; U.S. bases will no longer automatically be allowed on Panamanian territory. Before the treaty reaches that final stage, the U.S. government, and especially those heavily influenced by the right wing of the Republican Party, wants to be absolutely certain they are negotiating with a Panamanian government friendly to the U.S. and U.S. concerns.

With the U.S.-installed Endara government, the U.S. have moved much closer to the objective of a friendly (indeed, dependent) government. That Endara may well have been—and according to some sources may still be—as substantially involved in drugs as Noriega was supposed to have been is irrelevant to U.S. foreign policy. Of course, Noriega's supposed involvement was also irrelevant for a number of years. All indications are that the oligarchy—the Panamanian ruling class from years ago, those who profited from U.S. involvement—is back in power. The U.S. government is happy; the Panamanian oligarchy is happy. The U.S. military is happy because they had a chance to try out some of their new techniques and hardware.

The families of the U.S. troops who died in Panama are probably not so happy. The families of the thousands of Panamanians who were killed in the invasion are not so happy. The tens of thousands of Panamanian homeless are not happy; neither are the people of Panama. Other governments in Central and South America, even those critically dependent on the support of the U.S. could find nothing good to say about the U.S. invasion. The long0time image of Uncle Sam as the Wall Street gangster is lost on no one in Central America.

What was learned from the invasion of Panama? Certainly the lesson was clear to governments in places like Nicaragua or Cuba, or to the opposition in places like El Salvador: the U.S. government, if it can't get its way, will send in troops. For the Bush Administration the lesson has to be that they can invade another country and get away with it, that the plusses, from their point of view, far outweigh the minuses. There is no reason to think they won't do the same thing again when it looks good to them.

For those of us who oppose U.S. aggression against other countries, we have to marvel at the scarcity of voices raised against this invasion. Public figures were almost uniformly silent, their disagreement cut short by the Bush Administration propaganda which made the invasion sound like part of the war against drugs (and we're all for that, of course) and like the defense of the American flag and motherhood (remember the officer's wife who, according to Bush, suffered "threats of abuse" from Panamanian guards who stopped the Americans in a place where they had no business).

We also have to wonder at the U.S. media which likes to portray itself as open and fair to say nothing of probing and intelligent. The media, as a whole, swallowed the Bush line without question. Pool reporters were taken around by the military in Panama, reported what they were allowed to see, and let the people believe they were getting the whole truth. There were such ridiculous stories as the pounds of "cocaine" found in Noriega's private quarters which later turned out to be makings for tortillas (of course the first item was headlines, the second item was buried under the obituaries on page 47 of the paper).

Perhaps the most serious failure, however, is the frame of mind which allows the Panamanian invasion to so quickly and quietly disappear from the papers or TV. Maybe it is a kind of national egotism which says that Panama is, after all, a sort of banana republic of no real importance; what the U.S. does there is just another act in the comic operetta which has been the story of the U.S. in Central America for a century. What happens there just isn't quite real, isn't quite important in the way that Eastern Europe is important. And there is a large dose of racism involved; in fact, the Endara government has installed an almost totally "white" government unlike the thoroughly integrated government of past Panamanian administrations.

The bombs dropped in Panama were real bombs which blew apart real buildings full of real people who were killed. Families grieve over lost relatives. There is no comedy here: there is U.S. aggression—which continues—and which must stop.