Word: panama
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...punishing the opposing society for trying to mess with the best or a way of scaring them into surrendering before we killed everyone (which we can do, you know, city by city, town by town, every last fucking one of 'em, if it comes to that). But in Panama and Iraq, those reasons made no sense...
...Panama, the promised elections have still not been held, and when they are, the aristocrats led by Endara are sure to win. Noriega's political machine still exists, under new management, and with the same constituency, a constituency that doesn't want its leaders, but is nationalist enough to want to die rather than live under continued American occupation. Drug money still pours through the banks and keeps the place running on a shoestring. If not to prevent violence and totalitarianism, what were these wars...
Kuwait's economy is up and rolling again, with thousands of new jobs for unemployed Egyptians and East Asians. Iraq, too, is rejoining the world economy, under UN-encouraged imperialist terms. Israel is getting more American aid for its cooperation. Panama continues to be a safe money haven and the canal continues to be ours. And the other banana republics still send us all the bananas we want...
...Team USA to fire on and forget. Symbolic pump-priming requires ever larger, ever more evil, targets. It was no accident that every war we have fought since Vietnam has been "the largest mobilization of U.S. troops since Vietnam." Americans are finally angry enough about domestic issues that another Panama won't do much more than raise a few pulses...
...like Keynesian economics, raises the aggregate demand. It's a dependence effect, an addiction where you need to try harder just to forget how bad things are. Very few of us would stand for just another Panama or just another Iraq without squealing a great deal. And very few of us would mess with the really big bad armies and navies that haven't yet come in from the Cold...