Michael Parenti on General Noriega

Colonel Manuel Noriega reasserted Panama’s independence over the control of the Canal Zone and the leases for U.S. military bases. He reportedly re- fused to join an invasion against Nicaragua and maintained friendly relations with both Managua and Havana.

Before long, hostile reports about him began appearing in the U.S. media. In 1987, theJustice Department indicted Noriega for drug-smuggling. A crippling economic embargo was imposed on Panama, a country of two million people, causing a doubling of unemployment and a drastic cut-back in social benefits. Despite tough U.S. sanctions and troop buildups in the Canal Zone, Noriega refused to step down from power as Washington demanded.

In the U.S. press, our erstwhile friend and ally, Manuel Noriega, was swiftly transformed from “military leader” to “strongman dictator.” A media blitz demonized the Panamanian leader as a drug dealer, thus preparing the U.S. public for the ensuing invasion. During the aborted 1989 Panamanian elections, the U.S. press widely publicized the beating of an opposition candidate by Noriega supporters. It repeatedly referred to Noriega’s “goons” and “thugs.” Never did it refer to “Botha’s goons” in South Africa or “Duarte’s goons” in El Salvador or to the other thugs who practiced torture and murder in a host of U.S.-supported client states.

In mid-December 1989, just days before Bush’s invasion of Pan- ama, ABC’s Ted Koppel reported that Noriega had declared war on the United States. Others in the media made the same unsupported assertion. Instead, Noriega — who was just then making peace offers to opposition leaders — was quoted by Reuters as saying that the United States, “through constant psychological and military harassment, has created a state of war in Panama.”

O n December 20, 1989, President Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Panama. Television news, the medium reaching the largest audiences, covered Operation Just Cause just like a U.S. Army recruitment film: helicopters landing, planes dive-bombing, troops trotting along foreign streets, the enemy’s headquarters engulfed in flames, friendly Panamanians welcoming the invaders as liberators. No television reporter mentioned that the Panamanians interviewed were almost always well dressed, light skinned, and English speaking, in a country where most were poor, dark skinned, and Spanish speaking. Also left out of the picture were the many incidents of armed resistance by Panamanians.

Television correspondents enthusiastically or matter-of-factly reported the bombings of El Chorillo and other working-class neighborhoods, treating these aerial attacks on civilian populations as surgical strikes designed to break resistance in “Noriega strongholds.” Although it admitted that the heavily populated working-class districts supported Noriega, the press kept insisting that he lacked popular support in his own country. No footage was offered of El Chorillo’s total devastation or of the many lives lost in what amounted to a saturation terror-bombing of a civilian neighborhood. (For the horrific evidence, see Panama Deception, a documentary film made by Barbara Trent and the Empowerment Project in Los Angeles — which no major media outlet, by the way, has chosen to air.)

As usual, the news media emphasized operational questions: Was the invasion going well? Was there much resistance? How many U.S. lives were lost? Questions of international law and critical reac- tions from other nations were pretty much ignored. The UN General Assembly’s overwhelming condemnation of the U.S. invasion was given scant notice in the mainstream media.

The Pentagon claimed only twenty-three U.S. troops were killed. Scores of others were wounded or injured. No consideration was given by our government or media to the thousands of Panamanian soldiers and civilians killed, wounded, or in other ways harmed by the invasion. Nothing was said of the many thousands left homeless. After a studied silence, the White House offered a figure of 516 Panamanian dead, claiming most of those were military casualties.

On this, the press did little of its own investigation. It decided there was no way to verify Panamanian losses, so no losses were re- ported. When television correspondent Fred Francis was asked about civilian casualties, he said he did not know because he and the other journalists in the Pentagon’s pool were traveling with the U.S. Army. (At that same time, however, verification problems did not deter the media from offering fantastically inflated reports of about 80,000 to 100,000 demonstrators killed by the Romanian communist govern- ment. These figures — greater than the immediate Hiroshima death toll — should have been dismissed out of hand by any sane editor.) Only months later did a few brief reports appear regarding mass graves of Panamanian dead buried hastily by U.S. Army bulldozers. In covering the Panama invasion, many television journalists abandoned even the pretense of neutrality and independence. Net- work anchors used pronouns like “we” and “us” in describing the at- tack, as if they were members of the invading force or close advisers. NBC’s Tom Brokaw exclaimed on December 20, 1989: “We haven’t got [Noriega] yet.” PBS announcer Judy Woodruff concluded on the following day: “Not only have we done away with the [Panamanian army], we’ve also done away with the police force.” So much for the separation of press and state.

One NBC correspondent labeled as a “lynch mob” the Latin American diplomats at the Organization of American States who con- demned the invasion. Some network correspondents could not bring themselves to call the invasion an invasion, referring to it instead as a “military action,” “intervention,” “operation,” expedition,” “affair,” and even “insertion.”

A prestigious Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Globe and Mail, stunned by the U.S. media’s national chauvinism, ran a front-page article criticizing the United States and its press for “the peculiarjin- goism of U.S. society so evident to foreigners but almost invisible for most Americans.”

The demonization of Manuel Noriega continued in full force dur- ing the invasion of his country, thereby reversing the roles of vic- tim and victimizer. Television footage of him brandishing a machete

at a rally was repeatedly run, projecting the image of a violent indi- vidual. On December 20, 1989, CBS anchor Dan Rather referred to the Panamanian leader as a “wilyjungle snake” and a “swamp rat,” and “at the top of the list of the world’s drug thieves and scums.” On the same day, ABC anchor PeterJennings called Noriega “one of the more odious creatures with whom the United States has had a rela-

tionship,” and ABC’s “Nightline” host, Ted Koppel, announced “Nor- iega’s reputation as a brutal drug-dealing bully who reveled in his public contempt for the United States all but begged for strong retribution.”

The Pentagon reported U.S. troops entering Noriega’s head- quarters and discovering pornography, a Hitler portrait, voodoo paraphernalia, and one hundred pounds of cocaine. The pornogra- phy turned out to be Spanish-language copies of Playboy. The Hitler picture was in a Time-Life photo history of World War II. The “voodoo” implements were San Bias Indian carvings. And the “co- caine” was nothing more than an emergency stockpile of tortilla flour. But these belated corrections received scant coverage.

The United States invaded Panama purportedly to bring a drug- dealing dictator to justice. But once Noriega was captured and jailed in Miami, U.S. forces continued to occupy the entire country.

U.S. authorities installed Panama’s “new democratic” leaders: Presi- dent Guillermo Endara, Vice President Guillermo Ford, and Attor- ney General Rogelio Cruz. Jonathan Marshall reported in the Oak- land Tribune(January 5 and 22, 1990) that all three of these rich, white oligarchs were closely linked to companies, banks, and people heavily involved in drug operations or money-laundering. Marshall’s revelations received little attention from the major media.

With the U.S. military firmly controlling Panama, conditions in that country deteriorated. Unemployment, already high because of the U.S. embargo, climbed to 35 percent as drastic layoffs were im-posed on the public sector. Pension rights and other work benefits were lost. Newspapers and radio and television stations were closed by U.S. occupation authorities. Newspaper editors and reporters crit- ical of the invasion were jailed or detained, as were all the leftist po- litical party leaders. Union heads were arrested by the U.S. military, and some 150 local labor leaders were removed from their elected union positions. Public employees not supporting the invasion were purged. Crime rates climbed dramatically, along with poverty and destitution. Thousands remained homeless. Corruption was more widespread than ever. More money-laundering and drug-trafficking occurred under the U.S.-sponsored Endara administration than under Noriega. Yet these facts received little play in the major media.

Bush ordered the invasion of Panama claiming U.S. lives were in danger. In fact, none of the 35,000 U.S. nationals living in Panama were at risk. So then Bush said he had to avenge the death of a U.S. Army officer killed by the Panamanian Defense Force, even though the soldier had run a Panamanian military headquarters blockade in what seemed to be a deliberate — if unintentionally deadly — provocation. Then Bush claimed the invasion would bring democ- racy to Panama. Yet the Endara government installed by the Eighty- second Airborne Division has imprisoned more people than the Noriega government ever did. The U.S. media uncritically accepted

these White House lines and dutifully publicized them as positions worth serious consideration. The WashingtonPost (June 18, 1990) concluded — without any evidence — that human rights under the new regime had improved, and “press freedoms have been restored.” Thus did the news media hail Operation Rescue’s accomplishments.

Finally, Bush claimed the invasion would get rid of a drug- dealing dictator. But even the New York Times eventually questioned this motive. Forgetting that it had spent two years repeatedly calling Noriega Central America’s leading criminal, the Times (June 10, 1990) reached a moment of truth, admitting that Noriega’s alleged drug dealings were “relatively small scale by Latin American stan- dards. . . . American officials strongly suspect high-ranking military officers in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador of similar, and in some cases even greater involvement in drug dealing — yet have not taken harsh action against them.”

That the official reasons for intervention were false does not mean there were no real ones. By White House standards, the inva- sion was a success. It eliminated the left-oriented Panamanian De- fense Force and rolled back the Torrijos “socialistic” land reforms and social programs, thereby insuring a cheap and depressed labor market in Panama. It returned Panama to a Third World client state whose land, labor, resources, markets, and capital were again com- pletely accessible to corporate investors on the best possible terms. Yet none of this ever saw the light of day in the news stories or com- mentary in the corporate-owned media. So much for a free and in- dependent press.

Democracy for the Few (1995)

As part of a continuing pattern of deferring to presidential power in military and foreign affairs, the federal courts refused to hear cases challenging the president on such things as the undeclared war in Vietnam, the unprovoked U.S. invasion of Grenada, the imposition of embargoes on Nicaragua, the U.S. invasion of Panama, and the deportation of Haitian, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran refugees.

Against Empire (1995)

Among the various crusades fabricated by United States leaders is the “war on drugs.”

The White House would have us believe that the purpose of the 1989 invasion of Panama was to apprehend President Manuel Noriega, because he had dealt in drugs and was therefore in violation of US. laws. Here the United States operated under the remarkable principle that its domestic laws had jurisdiction over what the heads of foreign nations did in their own countries. Were that rule to work both ways, a U.S. president could be seized and transported to a fundamentalist Islamic country to be punished for failing to observe its laws.

U.S. forces did more than go after Noriega. They bombed and forcibly evacuated working-class neighborhoods in Panama City that were pro-Noriega strongholds.

They arrested thousands of officials, political activists, and journalists, and purged the labor unions and universities of anyone of leftist orientation.

They installed a government headed by rich compradors, such as President Guillermo Endara, who were closely connected to companies, banks, and individuals deeply involved in drug operations and the laundering of drug money.

The amount of narcotics that came through Panama represented but a small fraction of the total flow into the United States.

The real problem with Panama was that it was a populist-nationalist government.

The Panamanian Defense Force was a left-oriented military.

General Omar Torrijos, Noriega’s predecessor who was killed in a mysterious plane explosion that some blame on the CIA, initiated a number of egalitarian social programs.

The Torrijos government also negotiated a Canal treaty that was not to the liking of U.S. rightwingers.

And Panama maintained friendly relations with Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua.

Noriega had preserved most of Torrijos’s reforms.

After the U.S. invasion, unemployment in Panama soared; the public sector was cut drastically; and pension rights and other work benefits were abolished. Today Panama is once more a client-state nation, in the iron embrace of the U.S. empire.

2010 interview

They demonized Noriega as a means of being able to bomb and attack his country, and that’s what they did.

[For the invasion of Panama] the media stopped acting like the media and acted like a cheerleading section.

Parenti, Michael. (1995). Democracy for the Few. Boston, MA: St. Martin’s Press

Parenti, Michael. Against Empire. Reprint, City Lights, 1995.

America, RT. “Parenti on The Panama Deception.” YouTube, uploaded by RT, 20 Dec. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuXpNW35Kl4