Washington's stated justification for the attack was based on one man. The United States' sole rationale for sending its young me n and women to risk their lives and consciences killing innocent people, including untold numbers of children, and setting fire to huge sections of Panama City, was Noriega. He was characterized as evil, as the enemy of the people, as a drug-trafficking monster, and a s such he provided the administration with an excuse for the massive invasion of a country with two million inhabitants — which coincidentally happened to sit on one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the world.
I found the invasion disturbing to the point of driving me into a depression that lasted many days . I knew that Noriega had bodyguards, yet I could not help believing that the jackals could have taken him out, as they had Roldos and Torrijos. Most of his bodyguards, I suspected, had been trained by U.S. military personnel and probably could have been paid either to look the other way or t o carry out an assassination themselves .
The more I thought and read about the invasion, therefore, the more convinced I became that it signaled a U.S.
policy turn back toward the old methods of empire building, that the Bush administration was determined to go one better than Reagan and to demonstrate to the world that it would not hesitate to use massive force i n order to achieve its ends. It also seemed that the goal in Panama, in addition to replacing the Torrijos legacy with a puppet administration favorable to the United States, was to frighten countries like Iraq into submission. David Harris, a contributing editor at the New York Times Magazine and the author of many books, has an interesting observation . In his 2001 book Shooting the Moon, he states :
Of all the thousands of rulers, potentates, strongmen , juntas, and warlords the Americans have dealt with in al l corners of the world, General Manuel Antonio Noriega is the only one the Americans came after like this . Just once in its 225 years of formal national existence has the United States ever invaded another country and carried its ruler back to the United States to face trial and imprisonment for violations of American law committed o n that ruler's own native foreign turf.
Following the bombardment, the United States suddenly found itself in a delicate situation. For a while, it seemed as though the whole thing would backfire. The Bush administration might have quashed the wimp rumors, but now it faced the problem of legitimacy, of appearing to be a bully caught in an act of terrorism . It was disclosed that the U.S. Army had prohibited the press, the Red Cross, and other outside observers from entering the heavily bombed area s for three days, while soldiers incinerated and buried the casualties.
The press asked questions about how much evidence of criminal an d other inappropriate behavior was destroyed, and about how many died because they were denied timely medical attention, but such questions were never answered.