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| Our boys are ready to take our canal back! |
Dispatches from the War Fronts
Editors' Note: It turns out that the Dear Leader, laser-focused as ever on lowering the price of bacon and eggs to reward his loyal white working-class supporters, is starting wars faster than we can report on them. Just last week we brought you news about the second war the Tangerine-Faced Fascist intends to start once he is succeeded in his putsch. Not content with grabbing more of Mexico (without offering, as he did to Canada, to make it the 51st state for some obscure reason), he has focused his black Sharpie even further South, toward the Panama Canal, which according to him is ripe for the plucking. This week, we bring you the exciting third installment of our Dispatches. Spoiler alert: And there’s more to come.
By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with
Central American Correspondent William Walker in Panama City
“We stole it fair and square.”
With this cogent argument, former California Republican Senator S.I. Hayakawa, a relic of the era when California was Republican and students were expelled just for protesting a war (can you believe it?), explained why he opposed President Jimmy Carter’s decision to return the Panama Canal to its country, Panama, back in 1979.
The controversy had been forgotten up until last week, but one of the largest and nastiest Republican disinformation campaigns in the long-ago pre-Reagan era (so before American was great) was the tumult incited by Republicans over the decision to give up US sovereignty over the Panama Canal Zone, a narrow strip of land bordering the Panama Canal and bisecting the country of Panama, which we conveniently created to then seize the strip for our glorious canal at the turn of the 20th Century.
This is what the Panama Canal Zone looked like.
It's a little hard to see, but the Zone was a strip 10 miles wide stretching from ocean to ocean and bounded by Panama on both sides.
And if you were in Panama, it was like pre-1961 Berlin: there was a sign and a few MP’s but you could in many places cross freely between Panama and the Zone at the edge of the Panama City metropolis. But like East Berlin outsiders (like Panamanians) were subject to random arrest and interrogation. Eventually, the Panamanians tired of alien rule in the middle of their country and demanded the Canal back. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter agreed.
The blowback was terrific. Republicans used the deal as a cudgel to smear Democrats as unpatriotic surrender monkeys not to mention as a launching pad for their own ambitions:
Whatever happened to that guy? (PS Once in office, he did nothing to undo the handover of the Canal Zone or the Treaties.)
Underlying the decision to hand back the Canal and terminate the Canal Zone was an indisputable military fact: even though it was protected by 10,000 American troops and lots of impressive planes and stuff, there was no way to protect the Canal should the Panamanians decide to use force to take it back or in the meantime render it useless:
The Panama Canal is the United States' most important defense asset in Latin America but it is also highly vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, ranging from sabotage to nuclear attack.
Source: Central Intelligence Agency.
The Panamanians never had the Bomb, but they sure had the ability to knock a 50-mile canal out of commission with a single mortar. So there was in fact no alternative but to negotiate the best deal we could with Panama and give them their country back.
That's what Jimmy Carter did and he got a pretty good deal to boot. Then he lost to the hack who built support by opposing the peaceful handover.
In the intervening half-century, the Panama Canal has pretty much worked as Carter said it would: just fine.
But the America-first brainworm that devoured the Republican Party has now placed all this peace and prosperity at risk:
President-elect Donald J. Trump this week escalated his threats to retake control of the Panama Canal, falsely accusing Panama of allowing Chinese soldiers to control the vital shipping route and of overcharging American ships.
Mr. Trump has claimed Panama charges U.S. vessels “exorbitant prices” and warned that if they are not reduced after he takes office next month, he will demand that the United States be granted control of the canal “in full, quickly and without question.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump went on another tear. Announcing his choice for ambassador to the central American nation, Kevin Marino Cabrera, he accused the Panamanian government of “ripping us off on the Panama Canal, far beyond their wildest dreams.” ...
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| Coming soon to an ocean near you? |
While it is unclear what prompted Mr. Trump’s recent obsession with the Panama Canal, some Republicans have long objected to turning it over to Panamanian control. When Ronald Reagan ran for president, he said the people of the United States were the canal’s “rightful owners” and brought audiences to their feet with the line: “We bought it; we paid for it; we built it.”
“There’s a certain wing of the Republican Party that’s always been skeptical of the handover,” said Ryan C. Berg, the director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
“Complaints tend to crop up around the anniversary, and now that seems to be coming to a head because of the China issue and the desire to compete with China in the region,” he said.
The American military could certainly invade Panama with ease and seize the canal. The difficulty is what happens the next day, as Republicans learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What would happen if the Tangerine-Faced Fascist actually tried to lean on Panama? Would they just give up the sovereignty that they fought so hard to get? Or is it more likely that they will look around for some outside help? How hard would it be for Panama to grant base rights and other concessions to say China?
Nothing would put the lie more quickly to Republican dreams of conquest than Chinese naval bases in Panama City. Or worse yet, in Balboa on the Caribbean side, able to threaten US interests from Honduras to say Merde-a-Lardo?
This doesn't mean that Il Douche will not try to foment a war in Panama, to go along with his planned invasions of Canada and Mexico. And don't expect a newly-supine American media to sound the alarm.
It just could be that the long-cherished wet dream of Ronny Rayguns and his far right plug-uglies may become a reality. It's just a reminder of the iron law of Republican history: it repeats itself, the first time as farce and the second time as catastrophe.
🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇 🎇
UPDATE, Dec. 30, 2024 – James Fallows, who was present at the creation during the Carter Administration, confirms that Jimmy Carter realized he had no choice but to hand back the Canal Zone on whatever terms he could extract from Panama:
In fact, one of the most important reasons the US began negotiations to “give away” the Canal nearly 60 years ago was mounting fear from the US military that it would become impossible to defend such a large, sprawling asset if local sentiment kept turning more strongly anti-American.
It’s common knowledge that the transfer deal was signed under Jimmy Carter. But the serious talks began under Richard Nixon, out of realpolitik concerns about guarding the Canal in the long run. These strategic issues weren’t a big part of the in-public debate in the 1970s about transferring control to Panama. But they were a huge, perhaps decisive background factor.
....“Taking back” the Canal would be an open-ended invitation to disaster, as with the Iraq war. Even talking about it shows that you’re out of touch with reality.
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