Word: panama
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...reason the Bush Administration has so assiduously denied that it is gunning for him. Washington does not want to declare killing Saddam as a goal and risk failing to achieve it, repeating last year's humiliation of having Manuel Noriega slip through U.S. hands during the invasion of Panama. "Every day that Saddam survived," says a White House official, "would be seen as a victory for him and a loss...
Vietnam was not just a feeling. It became an argument. It became the touchstone of every subsequent national debate: Lebanon, Panama and, most recently, the gulf. The subtext of every debate became, Is this or is this not another Vietnam? Indeed, in order to take the country with him into the gulf, President Bush had to promise explicitly that "this will not be another Vietnam." If the gulf war turns out well, such assurances will no longer be necessary. Vietnam will be retired as the defining American experience of this...
...deaths. However precise American superplanes are, and if Vietnam after the War is any indication, the largest bombing raid in history will reduce Iraq to a heap of rubble. Kuwait will probably look worse. And when all the killing is over, if we behave as we did after Vietnam, Panama and Nicaragua, then Iraq and Kuwait will remain in shambles for years to come...
...more than a year after the arrest of the loathsome dictator, it's fair to ask: What did we accomplish in Panama? Because if Panama is to be our standard for success and the yardstick by which any action in the Persian Gulf may be measured, we ought to know what "success" looks like -- after the smoke clears, that is, and the dead have all been laid to rest...
Democracy is a little harder to assess, but by all accounts most of the gains have accrued to Panama's tiny, white-skinned elite of wealth. In the wake of the invasion, labor unions have been repressed and nonwhites shut out of high-ranking government positions. With unemployment running at more than 25%, crime is rampant, and angry protest marches are once again a common sight. President Endara, who is notoriously indifferent to the nation's low- income majority, has so far refused to legitimate his apparent preinvasion victory with new elections -- a tactless omission...