Protests organized

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On Dec. 20, more than 250 people rallied for a noon protest at the Federal Building in San Francisco to oppose the U.S. invasion of Panama. Speakers included Daniel Ellsberg, Philip Crawford of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the Pledge of Resistance, Richard Becker of the Peoples Antiwar Mobilization, Vietnam veteran activist Hal Muscat, Catherine Cusic of the Nicaraguan Information Center Community Action, and Jeff Mackler of Socialist Action. The previous evening, 500 marched from the Salvadoran Consulate to the Army Recruiting Center in San Francisco. Similar protests 1o0k 16 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUĄRY 1990 United States was helping put and keep General Noriega in power, " Reeves states. "He was our guy in May 1984 when we joined him in stealing an election because neither of us liked the result, an apparent leftist-populist victory by the 82-year-old former president of Panama, Arnulfo Arias Madrid."

Even senior Bush administration spokespersons have given the lie to the phony pretexts seized upon to rationalize the invasion. On Dec. 23, they admitted that the invasion plan was drawn up weeks before by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin L. Powell. They also disclosed that the invasion plan had been carefully rehearsed.

It was reported, too, that additional helicopters and tanks were stealthily moved into Panama, also weeks in advance, to provide the beefed-up firepower necessary for a swift, massive invasion. All these preparations were made before the marine was killed and before the Naval lieutenant and his wife were assaulted, and before a state of war was falsely portrayed as having been "declared" against the United States by General Noriega!

Hidden motives and objectives What then are the real reasons for the invasion of Panama?

First of all, the invasion is intended as a warning to anyone getting the idea into their heads that they can thumb their noses at the American colossus with impunity. The assault is patently intended to demonstrate that U.S. imperialism still has the will and the capability of crushing resistance to its dictates despite events in the last few decades pointing to the contrary, such as its partial place in cities across the United States.

defeat in Korea in Vietnam.

This unstated U.S. objective helps to explain the outrageous scale of destruction in a very wide area around "strategic military targets"-especially those which were located in centers of working-class residential areas.

Contrary to Pentagon assertions, there was nothing "surgical" about the indiscriminate blasting of the lives and property of tens of thousands of the poorest of Panama's inhabitants. Articles are beginning to surface in the mainstream press—such as one in the Dec. 28 San Francisco Examiner-that report as many as 1000 civilian deaths (600 in the city, 400 in the countryside) resulting from the U.S. invasion.

There is an ominous message contained in the news-photos and video-tapes of residential areas smashed to smithereens which were widely circulated to Latin American readers and viewers: Don't dare to defy Uncle Sam!

Another unstated, but obvious purpose of the invasion was to end Panama's policy of allowing Nicaragua and Cuba to evade some U.S. trade restrictions. Noriega had permitted Nicaragua, for instance, to use Panama as a central clearing house for its foreign commerce. It allowed both these U.S.-embargoed countries to get badly needed American-made goods, from machine parts to foodstuffs.

It especially serves Bush's short-term need to damage the Nicaraguan economy so that the negative effect on that people's living standards will increase the vote for pro-imperialist forces in the coming election.

The Eastern European connection Taken individually or together, Bush's rationalizations for murder and mayhem in Panama are anything but convincing. And no more convincing is Bush's avowed commitment to freedom and democracy in Panama or anywhere else.

But there is a less apparent yet decisive motive for Bush's shift from one month earlier in favor of the Panamanian adventure. guns, and bombs to "maintain order" when inevitable economic and social conflict erupts from the reintroduction of capitalist austerity and unemployment.

Baker's advance approval

What else can be the meaning of Secretary of State James A. Baker's unprecedented granting of advance approval to Soviet military action in Eastern Europe? Baker declared on the Dec. 24 NBC News program "Meet the Press" that "the United States would approve if the Soviet Union or other Warsaw Pact nations decided to send troops into Romania to support the pro-democracy forces trying to assume control in Bucharest."

And what else can be meant by the recent decision by Bush to renew close relations with China? Or the disclosure by Washington that top Bush emissaries were secretly sent there a month after the Tiananmen massacre—when at the very same time Bush had ostensibly taken something of a stand against the repression?

Put all these declarations and actions together and you have nothing less than an imperialist recommendation to the Gorbachevs and Jaruzelskis-and to the Li Pengs as well—not to hesitate to use whatever means are necessary to prevent or crush a genuine workers' revolution.

Finally, while very little has been revealed of the agreements reached between Gorbachev and Bush in Malta, there can be little doubt that some very explicit understandings were reached concerning the uses of military repression in each country's "sphere of influence"-an understanding we can be sure paved the way for the Panama atrocity, and others yet to come.