"The Winds of Words" by George Will
President Bush's policy toward Panama resembles
Beethoven's Eroica played on a kazoo, a harmonica and a snare drum. The
instruments are Inadequate to the large, swelling themes. U.S. goals are noble,
the enemy of them is reptilian. U.S. rhetoric is alternatively soaring and
excoriating. And General Noriega is unimpressed.
Beethoven was stirred to compose the Eroica by the spectacle (which he soon
came to despise) of Napoleon crashing around Europe making history; orphans
and axioms, one of which is in vogue regarding Panama. Napoleon said: If you
start to take Vienna-take Vienna. There is a time for tentativeness; power should
not be used promiscuously; many undertakings are optional. But once they are
undertaken, Impotence is unacceptable.
Let us, as the lawyers say, stipulate this: Noriega is repulsive. However, until
American power and prestige was engaged, it did not matter much, except to
Panamanians, who governs Panama. If this were 1999, the eve of the transfer of
control of the canal, it would be different. And the United States does have an
interest in the proliferation of democracies, particularly in this hemisphere,
especially in Central America. Political pluralism is a precondition for markets,
modernity and progress. But among contemporary troublemakers, Noriega is
small beer. While turning Lebanon into a charnel house, Syria's Assad still has
time for terrorism against Americans. Kaddafi and his poison-gas facility are not
disrupted by U.S. disapproval. Some of the people clamoring for the overthrow of
Noriega favor normalization of relations with Castro.
In "A Man for All Seasons," the bluff, unintellectual Duke of Norfolk cannot
understand why his friend Thomas More refuses to take the oath the king
demands derogating the pope's authority. Norfolk, exasperated by More risking
his neck over what Norfolk considered theological nitpicking, exclaims,
"Goddammit, man, it's disproportionate!" Most political mistakes involve some
disproportion. It may have been a mistake to invest U.S. prestige in the dicey
project of toppling Noriega with the winds of words. But Panama does get
Americans excited. Strong passions about Panama contributed to the unmaking
of a president. Reagan's 1976 campaign to wrest the Republican nomination
from Ford was fading until Reagan stumbled upon the issue of the "giveaway of
the canal." Reagan's energized campaign roared back to life, continuing
divisiveness that in the fall cost Ford more than Carter's thin margin of victory.
The fierce fight over ratification of the canal treaties showed the place Panama
occupies in America's psyche. Nicaragua has never had such a hold on
America's attention. That is a shame. When, at last, Noriega goes, as he will, the
United States will contribute a substantial sum-say $500 million-to heal wounds
inflicted by U.S. policy on Panama's economy. If such a sum had been given to
the contras, the hemisphere would by now have been cleansed of Nicaragua's
Stalinist regime. Compared with it, Noriega's thugocracy is a gnat.
As we huff and puff and try to blow Noriega's house down with "world opinion"
and the dithering of Latin American leaders, it is clear that some slogans do not
sound as good as they once did. For two decades, many Americans, including
some early advocates of the Vietnam intervention, have been relentlessly
didactic, extracting cautionary lessons from Vietnam. For example: It is wicked
for the United States to throw its weight around as "policeman of the world." It is
wrong to "interfere in the "internal affairs" of other nations (other than, say, South
Africa). From the late 19th century until Vietnam, American isolationism
expressed the conviction that America was too good for the world. Post- Vietnam
isolationism holds that the world is too good for America. Such isolationism
comes cloaked in the language of "multilateralism" --America can act but only in
concert with coalitions of nations that almost never can agree to act.
Suddenly, because of Panama, some people not recently heard praising
American assertiveness seem to wish the United States had a bit more weight to
throw around. Back in the bad old days, such ~s 1965, U.S. military force helped
restore order and plant democracy in the Dominican Republic. America is too
virtuous to do that sort of thing anymore. But some people who have deplored
America's "imperial overreach" regret today's postimperial inability to reach
Noriega.
Do something: Still, thundering at Noriega is wonderfully cathartic. It is
hairychestedness on the cheap for liberals looking for a place to look tough. And
it dovetails nicely with antidrug demagoguery. Noriega's connection with the drug
cartel makes him a useful target for politicians eager to tell Americans what many
of them want to believe- that we can export blame for our drug problem. It is, of
course, absurd to blame the problem on those who supply America's $150 billion
demand for drugs. And it is absurd to believe that if Noriega were knocked out of
drug trafficking, no one would step in to take his place.
On all sides voices urge the United States to act but not in any way that might
arouse latent Latin American resentments. Do something, but do not make
anyone angry. Such advice is nicely balanced and utterly immobilizing. President
Bush obviously places a high value on popularity. His craving for it is apparent in
his peripatetic courtship of press and politicians, and in his almost abject pleas
for "bipartisanship. In practice bipartisanship buys popularity by adopting
Democratic policies as in the liquidation of the contras, and in giving Democrats
shelter under the umbrella of a convenient fraud like the latest budget accord.
However, a great nation cannot have its foreign policy controlled by a craving for
popularity. It is far less important that the United States be loved by the Latin
American masses than that the United States be feared by certain Latin
American elites. Those elites, from whom the masses have much to fear, include
antidemocratlc military officers contemplating coups and Sandinistas rigging
sham elections. For the United States the wages of weakness are the contempt
of the Noriegas of this world. For Latin Americans, the wages of U.S. weakness
are much worse.
George Will. "The Winds of Words." Newsweek 22 May 1989: 96.