Fourteen years before former President George W. Bush launched a war of dubious justification against Iraq, his daddy, former President George H. W. Bush, launched a war of equally dubious justification against Panama.
Actually, baby Bush seemed hell-bent on a personal vendetta to get Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for allegedly plotting to assassinate his daddy. And daddy Bush seemed hell-bent on a personal vendetta to get Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega for mocking the U.S.’ extraterritorial power throughout the Americas and for calling him a whimp (as well as other profane names that would make even brash Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez blush).
But where we will be living with the adverse consequences of baby Bush’s war for decades to come, all of the adverse consequences of his daddy’s war have long been relegated to the dustbin of history.
Nevertheless, for those who think that, by invading Iraq, baby Bush did more than any president in history to undermine the moral authority of the United States, it’s worth recalling what his daddy did. For it can be argued that baby Bush’s actions were just fruits of the poisonous tree his father planted by invading Panama in willful defiance of international law. Moreover, his claim of doing so because Noriega was orchestrating the shipment of drugs into the U.S. was every bit as fatuous as baby’s Bush’s claim of invading Iraq because Saddam possessed WMDs.
To be fair, though, daddy Bush also made patently specious claims about Noriega rigging elections, representing a threat to American security, and threatening to block the Panama Canal. But, even if true, such claims would have given the U.S. just cause to invade half of the countries on planet earth.
Of course, nothing damns this perfidious lineage quite like the fact that the CIA created both of these putative dragons for daddy and baby Bush to slay, respectively. Except that where baby Bush’s dragon was captured, tried and executed, daddy Bush’s was captured, tried and thrown in a U.S. prison….
Which brings me to the point of this commentary: because Noriega has now been plucked from the dustbin of history after serving 20-years behind bars. In fact he was scheduled to be released in 2007. But France filed an extradition request shortly before his release date, claiming that Noriega laundered $3 million from his drug trade by purchasing an apartment in Paris.
So after wasting away for another three years in prison while his lawyers fought in vain to stave off extradition, the 75-year old Noriega was finally dusted off yesterday and put on a plane bound for Paris yesterday to face these additional charges.
The U.S. acted just like the corrupt policeman of the world it was always accused of being when it arrested and imprisoned Noriega. But this move by France to pile on reeks of cynical and pusillanimous high-handedness. And, ironically, the best way to illustrate this is by reference to the fate that befell Saddam.
Recall that France was in the vanguard of countries that opposed the invasion of Iraq on sound legal and moral grounds. So just imagine the hypocrisy if, just before Saddam was scheduled to be executed, France filed a request to have him extradited to face money laundering charges. For that, essentially, is what it is doing in this case.
And remember, just as it was with Iraq, the U.S. invasion of Panama provoked international outrage. Therefore, it is beyond unconscionable for the French to be exploiting this invasion now by snatching Noriega on such specious charges.
What makes this extradition so hypocritical, however, is that the French routinely hosted a far more corrupt strongman, former President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, without giving any apparent thought to prosecuting him. And they did this knowing full well that he was accused of laundering billions in ill-gotten gains by purchasing, among other things, an apartment on Avenue Foch in Paris as well as a palatial villa at Cap-Martin on the French Riviera.
(Not to mention the open secret that Sese Seko too was a creature of the CIA, having launched his 32-year dictatorship by backing his 1965 coup….)
In any event, this prosecution (or persecution) of Noriega proves that, when it comes to behaving like a self-righteous bully on the world stage, the U.S. has nothing on France – as my friends in Northwest Africa know all too well.
Meanwhile, within hours of his arrival this morning, Noriega appeared at a bond hearing where a French judge ruled that he must remain in jail pending trial. Curiously enough, he was already tried and convicted in 1999 by a French court (in absentia because he was in a U.S. prison) on the same money laundering charges he’s now facing. Therefore, he is virtually guaranteed of being reconvicted after what, in effect, will be a retrial.
He faces 10 years, which means, alas, that he will probably end up spending the rest of his life in prison.
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