Nosing Away From Panama

TRYING to fully understand recent history is like trying to size up a building with your nose pressed to it. It's a fruitless task. And yet recently, quite a few influential people have being trying. Sniffing away at this month's "Panama debacle," they have arrived at premature judgments of American involvement, or lack thereof.

On the right, Jesse Helms accuses the White House of abandoning the coup plotters in their noble struggle. On the left are a slew of Democrats who have the gall to denounce Bush's inaction in Panama after repeatedly warning him against military adventurism abroad.

And there are the journalists. With benefit of 20/20 hindsight, Newsweek pictured a victorious Noriega on last week's cover under the telling caption "Amateur Hour." The London Economist called the episode Bush's "Bay of Piglets." In a lonely (and uncharacteristic) defense of Bush, The New York Times said, "Mr. Bush may have had good reason to temporize his backing of the Panamanian coup plotters."

"Good reason" indeed. The whole affair smells fishy from a distance of three weeks, so one can only imagine the stench on the day of the uprising. A coup may sound like a good idea, if for no other reason than eliminating a standing embarassment to the U.S. But coups aren't ideas; they're actions.

IN retrospect, the coup could have had three outcomes. If Bush had actively supported the coup, the plotters might have succeeded. But the improvement for the people of Panama would have been marginal at best; replace despot Manuel Noriega with would-be despot Moises Giroldi, a career military man with no demonstrated affection for democracy.

The U.S. would have also paid dearly for imprudent intervention, particularly in the loss of soldiers' lives. Such action also would have provoked deep resentment in the Organization of American States which, although not enamored of Noriega, adamantly opposes Yankee interference in the domestic affairs of other nations in the hemisphere.

On top of all this, the legality of military intervention would have been tenuous at best. A 1976 executive order forbids the U.S. armed forces to participate in assassination attempts or any operation which could result in assassination.

The actual result, in the absence of U.S. intervention, was not surprising--a debilitating purge of the Panamanian military (at least 1/10th of whom are said to have been involved in the uprising) and the promulgation of harsh contingency measures. These "emergency war laws" broaden the already expansive jurisdiction of the dictator's police force.

Now the Panamanian people face a continuation of the dismal Noriega regime, marked by drug profiteering for the few and harsh austerity for the many.

THERE was, for some U.S. officials, a third, more frightening possibility. Could the entire affair have been a trap engineered by the general himself, to ensnare disloyal officers of the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) and the American forces stationed in Panama?

For now, this possibility remains only that. But it suggests some troubling questions. Why did Giroldi refuse to turn Noriega over to the Americans? Why was the only communication between the conspirators and the U.S. through the wife of one of the plotters? And most importantly, should the U.S. have entrusted American lives and prestige with such an unsavory group?