Panama: Digging a U.S. Hole : Policy: Gen. Noriega is gone but U.S. troops remain. Involvement may have been the right idea implemented in a faulty way.

In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt helped carve the Republic of Panama out of neighboring Colombia, to facilitate the digging of a great canal for the United States.

In 1989, George Bush may have dug a different hole for the United States, launching an overkill invasion of little Panama to do away with the regime of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega.

Panama’s existence has been punctuated by coups, revolutions, political assassinations and periodic anti-American riots. But nothing in Panama’s volatile past compares with the chaos of the last two years, the buildup of extraordinary hostilities--two Presidents of the United States versus the detestable, cunning, resourceful Noriega. Even prior to last week’s invasion, the Panamanian economy was virtually destroyed by U.S. sanctions and the Panamanian democratic impulse was quashed by Noriega oppression.

The United States calls its operation “Just Cause,” almost as if wishing will make it so. As a reporter, I have covered a number of U.S. military actions in Latin America--the Bay of Pigs, intervention in the Dominican Republic, Grenada. Like those disputed operations, Just Cause suffers from failures of intelligence and political planning.

Assuming that the impulsions were correct, that to protect American citizens and to safeguard Panama Canal shipping, Noriega had to be ousted, the huge question now is whether the means suited the ends. The world watches an invasion, with civilian and military casualties. Noriega soldiers, famous for their bullying and brutality, have turned into looters. U.S. troops, famous for their training and technology, have turned into policemen, the only functioning law and order on the isthmus.

Noriega, days after the invasion, was still at large. The American troops, by contrast, may have to remain in Panama for an indefinite stay.

Once again, U.S. action appears to have proceeded from wrong assumptions. Among the most wrong:

-- Noriega would be quickly found and captured.

-- Noriega followers in the Panama Defense Forces (PDF) would refuse to fight and would lay down arms.

Considering the presence of military intelligence and Central Intelligence Agency experts in Panama, Noriega’s whereabouts should have been pinned down, especially after all the years of plotting against him. Or, at the moment of launch, the White House should have been warned by U.S. intelligence that the general was not available, at home or office. On the first day of combat, he mocked his American enemies by broadcasting an appeal for resistance from a clandestine radio station.

The PDF did not lay down its arms, nor did the paramilitary “Dignity Battalion.” Washington, despite its familiarity with Panama, seems to have ignored the fact that Noriega’s top officers and their soldiers had close ties, military and financial, to the general.

Washington also seems to have ignored Panamanian pride in independence. While the middle class is uniformly opposed to Noriega--especially after he annulled the results of last May’s presidential election--the general enjoys considerable support among the poor. He is a demagogue--and an effective one, full of populist pretensions. The Bush Administration should have realized that an invasion would inevitably trigger a nationalist reaction.

No amount of prior experience seems to have taught proper lessons about the quality of intelligence or the cultural gap between peoples. The U.S. government still cannot comprehend how Latin American societies respond to events of this kind, not even how these societies function.

After the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA admitted having believed the entire island would rise against Fidel Castro the moment the U.S.-organized brigade of Cuban exiles came ashore. In reality, even Cubans who had turned against Castro saw the invasion as an attack on national sovereignty and consequently stood behind their “Maximum Leader.”

In the 1983 invasion of Grenada, the intelligence failure was underestimating the readiness of a tiny island army, bolstered by armed Cuban workers who were building a new airport. They could not repel the United States but they could embarrass it--and they could cause an unacceptable number of U.S. casualties.

In Panama, what was to be a “clean surgical strike” (in the words of a Pentagon briefer) turned into nasty and costly urban warfare. PDF positions in the capital had to be bombed Thursday night, an action not previously deemed necessary. An attack on Noriega headquarters in the middle of a densely populated working class barrio caused considerable physical damage--and a number of civilian casualties.

The paradox was plain outside Panama. Military action by the world’s most powerful democracy was killing innocent civilians while the security forces of now-dethroned Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu were gunning down pro-democracy demonstrators.

The White House has now acknowledged that U.S. military presence in Panama is “open ended.” Whatever happens to Noriega, restoring order in the republic will take weeks, probably months. The Dominican intervention of 1965 may suggest a precedent. The United States sent in troops to quell a local civil war. The rebels were quickly defeated. The fighting was minimal. Yet U.S. forces remained for more than three months. Panama is a bigger operation, in fact the largest U.S. military involvement abroad since Vietnam.

Could the ends have been served by better means? Many U.S. observers think the President should have ordered a first-rate commando operation, not an invasion, if the purpose was to grab Noriega. Others have almost palpable nostalgia for the days of quick, quiet covert operations--a small band to accomplish mammoth change.

The means adopted certainly made no friends in the Western Hemisphere. Most Latin American governments denounced the invasion, including Colombia where the democratic government is at war with the same drug cartels that were part of Noriega’s moonlight enterprises. The invasion may complicate efforts at peace settlements in Nicaragua and El Salvador. The United States will have more trouble holding the moral high ground in relation to the leftist Sandinistas and the Salvadoran Marxist guerrillas.

Was the right thing done in the wrong way? Was the wrong thing done in the wrong way? Just as U.S. troops remain in Panama, hostages to the invasion, U.S. policy remains a question mark, hostage to world perception.