Word: panama
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...need to go to Colombia to boost his already stratospheric approval ratings. True, he wanted to show his support for Colombian President Virgilio Barco's war against his country's entrenched cocaine processors. He also had some serious fence mending to do with Latin leaders aggrieved by the Panama invasion. But while the Cartegena drop-by took place on foreign soil, it was designed for domestic consumption. For Bush to score points at home, all he had to do was go a few rounds on the Medellin cartel's turf and come back alive. His bold posture is working...
Bush will reaffirm U.S. commitments to a consensual approach to fighting the drug lords. He will applaud Colombia's six-month-old crackdown against the drug barons. He will offer reassurances that except for the soldiers stationed at the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, there will be no American troops left in the region after the U.S. completes the withdrawal of its invasion force from Panama, perhaps by the end of this month. Bush hopes that once those assurances are given, Barco will agree to the deployment of the antismuggling naval task force and the installation of a U.S.-built...
...these skeptical times, polls may be the one remaining authority that the press customarily accepts without question. The subject may be the Panama invasion (the public supported it), the arrest of Mayor Marion Barry (Washingtonians thought he should resign), or Jane Pauley's treatment by NBC (PEOPLE readers who answered a call-in survey found it unfair), but editors rarely meet a poll they don't like. Polls have even been published reporting the number of California drivers with paraphernalia hanging from their rearview mirrors (8%), and Iowans with ornaments on their lawns...
Bush spoke grandly of "the revolution of '89," the explosion of freedom, then pathetically listed Panama as item No. 1. This only drew attention to our sideline role in the truly historic developments of 1989, in Eastern Europe. Perhaps there is little more we should or could have done in 1989. But 1990 and beyond will be different...
Have we now lost that special American kind of greatness? Do we now think that spraying bullets in a place like Panama makes you a superpower? Bush has been criticized for spending much of last week inspecting the troops, yesterday's pastime, when he should have been concocting a "new vision," but lack of vision doesn't threaten America's greatness. What does is a simple unwillingness to make the effort...