Saturday, December 27, 2014

necropolitics: how the iraq war began in panama


nacla |  In the mythology of American militarism that has taken hold since George W. Bush’s disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, his father, George H.W. Bush, is often held up as a paragon of prudence—especially when compared to the later reckless lunacy of Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. After all, their agenda held that it was the messianic duty of the United States to rid the world not just of “evil-doers” but “evil” itself. In contrast, Bush Senior, we are told, recognized the limits of American power. He was a realist and his circumscribed Gulf War was a “war of necessity” where his son’s 2003 invasion of Iraq was a catastrophic “war of choice.” But it was H.W. who first rolled out a “freedom agenda” to legitimize the illegal invasion of Panama.

Likewise, the moderation of George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Colin Powell, has often been contrasted favorably with the rashness of the neocons in the post-9/11 years. As the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989, however, Powell was hot for getting Noriega. In discussions leading up to the invasion, he advocated forcefully for military action, believing it offered an opportunity to try out what would later become known as “the Powell Doctrine.” Meant to ensure that there would never again be another Vietnam or any kind of American military defeat, that doctrine was to rely on a set of test questions for any potential operation involving ground troops that would limit military operations to defined objectives. Among them were: Is the action in response to a direct threat to national security? Do we have a clear goal? Is there an exit strategy?

It was Powell who first let the new style of American war go to his head and pushed for a more exalted name to brand the war with, one that undermined the very idea of those “limits” he was theoretically trying to establish. Following Pentagon practice, the operational plan to capture Noriega was to go by the meaningless name of “Blue Spoon.” That, Powell wrote in My American Journey, was “hardly a rousing call to arms…[So] we kicked around a number of ideas and finally settled on...Just Cause. Along with the inspirational ring, I liked something else about it. Even our severest critics would have to utter ‘Just Cause’ while denouncing us.”

Since the pursuit of justice is infinite, it’s hard to see what your exit strategy is once you claim it as your “cause.” Remember, George W. Bush’s original name for his Global War on Terror was to be the less-than-modest Operation Infinite Justice

Powell says he hesitated on the eve of the invasion, wondering if it really was the best course of action, but let out a “whoop and a holler” when he learned that Noriega had been found. A new Panamanian president had already been sworn in at Fort Clayton, a U.S. military base in the Canal Zone, hours before the invasion began.

Here’s the lesson Powell took from Panama: the invasion, he wrote, confirmed all his “convictions over the preceding twenty years, since the days of doubt over Vietnam. Have a clear political objective and stick to it. Use all the force necessary, and do not apologize for going in big if that is what it takes...As I write these words, almost six years after Just Cause, Mr. Noriega, convicted on the drug charges contained in the indictments, sits in an American prison cell. Panama has a new security force, and the country is still a democracy.”

That assessment was made in 1995. From a later vantage point, history’s judgment is not so sanguine. As George H.W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, Thomas Pickering said about Operation Just Cause: “Having used force in Panama...there was a propensity in Washington to think that force could provide a result more rapidly, more effectively, more surgically than diplomacy.” The easy capture of Noriega meant "the notion that the international community had to be engaged...was ignored."

"Iraq in 2003 was all of that shortsightedness in spades,” Pickering said. “We were going to do it all ourselves." And we did.

The road to Baghdad, in other words, ran through Panama City. It was George H.W. Bush’s invasion of that small, poor country 25 years ago that inaugurated the age of preemptive unilateralism, using “democracy” and “freedom” as both justifications for war and a branding opportunity.

5 comments:

CNu said...

In addition to simple compliance, i.e., activate the cameras or else, there's the intransigent barrier of the fraternal orders of overseers (unions) that seem for all intents and purposes to only serve the interests of the bad overseers and the devil may care what opprobrium they bring to the overseers who actually attempt to live up to their peace officer oath. www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/opinion/david-brooks-the-union-future.html
GETTING RID OF BAD COPS A small percentage of cops commit most of the abuses. A study by WNYC News in New York found that, since 2009, 40 percent of the “resisting arrest” charges were filed by just 5 percent of New York Police Department officers. In other words, most officers rarely get in a confrontation that leads to that charge, but a few officers often get in violent confrontations.But it’s very hard to remove the bad apples from the force. Trying to protect their members, unions have weakened accountability. The investigation process is softer on police than it would be on anyone else. In parts of the country, contract rules stipulate that officers get a 48-hour cooling-off period before having to respond to questions. They have access to the names and testimony of their accusers. They can be questioned only by one person at a time. They can’t be threatened with disciplinary action during questioning.
More seriously, cops who are punished can be reinstated through a secretive appeals process that favors job retention over public safety. In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf has a riveting piece with egregious stories of cops who have returned to the force after clear incompetence. Hector Jimenez was an Oakland, Calif., cop who shot and killed an unarmed 20-year-old man in 2007. Seven months later, he killed another unarmed man, shooting him in the back three times while he ran away. The city paid damages. Jimenez was fired. But he appealed through his union and was reinstated with back pay.CAMERAS There’s long been talk about equipping cops with wearable cameras. In Miami, Boston, and Wichita, Kan., city officials bandied about such plans, but the local unions moved to thwart them, arguing, in one case, that wearing cameras “will distract officers from their duties, and hamper their ability to act and react in dangerous situations.”

Ed Dunn said...

I believe the more accurate narrative is how Ferguson began in Panama. The thing about Panama is they allowed their country to host US military installations and allowed the US military to engage in military drills and ramp up - Noriega never complained, even after he voided the elections in the spring of 1989 and ruled as a military dictator. So when things got down in December, we didn't "invaded" a damn thing - we were already there and just had to roll out of bed and take over.


In America, the same narrative where we are allowing the police to embed in our communities as a military, conduct intelligence gathering and practice drills and deadly force engagements and we sitting around doing nothing...just waiting for them to one day, roll out of their beds and take over these communities in a military fashion as the ultimate quick/dirty urban gentrification option.

Ed Dunn said...

I find this argument to be BS - asking the police to police themselves. The community should have their own cameras in place to deal with not only rogue cops but rogue individuals like this dude who got his behind shot pulling out one of those crappy $159 Asian-made 9mm that jams and late discharge a bullet (due to half-ass hammer striking) that you pray won't blow up inside the chamber while you holding it. We can go further with research and show that communities that established street cameras not only have lower crime but better cooperation with the police because the community can see and know who the police are.

Dale Asberry said...

I'm approaching it from the Subrealist mindset: religion priming and knowing that you're being watched changes rationalized cheating behavior more toward socially and morally acceptable behavior. It even works on sociopaths. I don't have any links handy, but you can start your dive down the rabbit hole by looking at the research and writing from Dan Ariely. These bad apple cops have shown no change when citizens film them. Oftentimes, it's even encouraged worse behavior because these cops will confiscate cameras from citizen video reporters.

Ed Dunn said...

Same rule applies for understanding the difference between cow grazing supporting militias and "hands up" docile protesters.....and how they approach TPTB

http://youtu.be/oOtfjcIfuYo

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