Indeed, the author says little that hasn’t been said before, but she packs a trove of ideological assumptions into nearly every page. Inducing guilt in non-native readers would seem to be the guiding idea behind Dunbar-Ortiz’s (Emerita, Ethnic Studies/California State Univ., Hayward Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War, 2005, etc.) survey, which is hardly a new strategy. And so, this book would seem to suggest, did every other native victim of colonialism. Still, an unusually upbeat military history of the war that served as a training ground for Operation Desert Storm.Ĭuster died for your sins. Starting with Carter, they argue, American policy has begun to promote democracy and human rights in Latin America, replacing the old image of ``Yankee imperialism.'' Recent revelations about the high number of Panamanian casualties during the invasion leave some doubt as to exactly how efficient American forces were.
Operation just cause free#
The authors see the kind of small, splendidly trained and equipped all-volunteer army that defeated Noriega as well suited for the role of possibly stabilizing other countries in order to buy time to allow democratic societies and free economies to develop. Finally, President Bush, his patience exhausted, gave go-ahead orders to the planners of Operation Just Cause, Generals Powell and Thurmon, who, the authors note, had learned in Vietnam the high price of the piecemeal application of deadly force-a price not paid again in Panama as, under the unified command of General Carl Stiner, elite American units from all service branches swept away the well-armed forces of Noriega in eight hours. The general had also worked with Cuba against US interests, endangering Canal security and American citizens.
According to Donnelly, Roth, and Baker, Noriega and his henchmen had stolen elections, looted the Treasury of Panama, murdered, kidnapped, beat, and tortured rivals, built a ruthless military force, dealt in lucrative drug trafficking, detained and beat Americans, and, finally, killed a US marine officer. Noriega's intelligence services to the US about Cuba and the Marxist forces in Central America, the authors say, it was clear to the White House that the Panamanian strongman had to be deposed. Three editors of Army Times offer a minutely detailed-and adulatory-narrative of Operation Just Cause, the US invasion of Panama in December 1989.
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