When a ‘Ripple’ Becomes a Wave : Panama incident may be a warning for U.S.

The United States is a big country with interests and responsibilities the world over. Panama is a very small country. So it is understandable that most U.S. citizens have thought very little about Panama since the end of “Operation Just Cause,” the U.S. military invasion that ousted Gen. Manuel Noriega in December, 1989.

That has now changed dramatically. Wednesday, a U.S. serviceman stationed in Panama was killed and a second was badly injured in an apparent terrorist attack. And Thursday, Secret Service agents had to hustle President Bush and Panamanian President Guillermo Endara away from a public rally in Panama City for their own protection.

Bush was to deliver an upbeat speech on U.S.-Panamanian relations during a brief stopover on his way to Brazil. He never spoke because the tear gas that Panamanian authorities used to disperse anti-U.S. protesters nearby wafted over the speaker’s platform. So instead of lauding the apparent progress Panama has made in the 2 1/2 years since the U.S. invasion, Bush got some firsthand experience in just how unstable that nation’s political condition is.

The sad fact is that--as the United States’ attention has been drawn to many other foreign issues since the Panama invasion, not least among them the Gulf War and a failed coup in Moscow--things in Panama have changed little, and not all for the better.

Although the Noriega dictatorship is gone, much of the damage the United States inflicted on Panama still has not been repaired. To cite just the most obvious example, the Panama City slums that burned during the fighting have not been replaced by new housing for the poor.

And even though statistics indicate Panama’s economy began to rise after U.S. economic sanctions were lifted, the numbers are deceiving. The growth has been in areas such as banking, trade and tourism from which wealth has been slow to trickle down to the vast majority. Recent statistics also indicate that 46% of Panama’s people live in poverty--more than when Noriega was in power.

The results of the Panama invasion are mixed even in the problem area that Bush used to justify the ouster of Noriega--the general’s involvement in drug smuggling. After a brief downturn following the invasion, drug smuggling is now estimated to be at the level it was during Noriega’s day. Free-lance smugglers have filled the void left after the dictator’s tightly controlled ring collapsed. And some of Panama’s banking houses are once again laundering money.

Bush later tried to belittle the Panama City incident as “a little ripple.” But a little ripple in the United States can be a tidal wave for a small nation like Panama. Bush and the rest of us have not seen the last of the Panamanian crisis.