nacla | In the mythology of American militarism that has taken hold since
George W. Bush’s disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, his father,
George H.W. Bush, is often held up as a paragon of prudence—especially
when compared to the later reckless lunacy of Vice President Dick
Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz. After all, their agenda held that it was the
messianic duty of the United States to rid the world not just of “evil-doers” but “evil” itself. In contrast, Bush Senior, we are told,
recognized the limits of American power. He was a realist and his
circumscribed Gulf War was a “war of necessity” where his son’s 2003
invasion of Iraq was a catastrophic “war of choice.” But it was H.W. who
first rolled out a “freedom agenda” to legitimize the illegal invasion
of Panama.
Likewise, the moderation of George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense,
Colin Powell, has often been contrasted favorably with the rashness of
the neocons in the post-9/11 years. As the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff in 1989, however, Powell was hot for getting Noriega. In
discussions leading up to the invasion, he advocated forcefully for
military action, believing it offered an opportunity to try out what
would later become known as “the Powell Doctrine.” Meant to ensure that
there would never again be another Vietnam or any kind of American
military defeat, that doctrine was to rely on a set of test questions
for any potential operation involving ground troops that would limit
military operations to defined objectives. Among them were: Is the
action in response to a direct threat to national security? Do we have a
clear goal? Is there an exit strategy?
It was Powell who first let the new style of American war go to his
head and pushed for a more exalted name to brand the war with, one that
undermined the very idea of those “limits” he was theoretically trying
to establish. Following Pentagon practice, the operational plan to
capture Noriega was to go by the meaningless name of “Blue Spoon.” That,
Powell wrote in My American Journey,
was “hardly a rousing call to arms…[So] we kicked around a number of
ideas and finally settled on...Just Cause. Along with the inspirational
ring, I liked something else about it. Even our severest critics would
have to utter ‘Just Cause’ while denouncing us.”
Since the pursuit of justice is infinite, it’s hard to see what your
exit strategy is once you claim it as your “cause.” Remember, George W.
Bush’s original name for his Global War on Terror was to be the
less-than-modest Operation Infinite Justice.
Powell says he
hesitated on the eve of the invasion, wondering if it really was the
best course of action, but let out a “whoop and a holler” when he
learned that Noriega had been found. A new Panamanian president had
already been sworn in at Fort Clayton, a U.S. military base in the Canal Zone, hours before the invasion began.
Here’s the lesson Powell took from
Panama: the invasion, he wrote, confirmed all his “convictions over the
preceding twenty years, since the days of doubt over Vietnam. Have a
clear political objective and stick to it. Use all the force necessary,
and do not apologize for going in big if that is what it takes...As I
write these words, almost six years after Just Cause, Mr. Noriega,
convicted on the drug charges contained in the indictments, sits in an
American prison cell. Panama has a new security force, and the country
is still a democracy.”
That assessment was made in 1995. From a later vantage point,
history’s judgment is not so sanguine. As George H.W. Bush’s ambassador
to the United Nations, Thomas Pickering said about
Operation Just Cause: “Having used force in Panama...there was a
propensity in Washington to think that force could provide a result more
rapidly, more effectively, more surgically than diplomacy.” The easy
capture of Noriega meant "the notion that the international community
had to be engaged...was ignored."
"Iraq in 2003 was all of that shortsightedness in spades,” Pickering said. “We were going to do it all ourselves." And we did.
The road to Baghdad, in other words, ran through Panama City. It was
George H.W. Bush’s invasion of that small, poor country 25 years ago
that inaugurated the age of preemptive unilateralism, using “democracy”
and “freedom” as both justifications for war and a branding opportunity.
