This Day. 31st anniversary of the invasion of Panama

The 1989 invasion of Panama was staged just two weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the empty euphoria about the so-called “end of Communism.” US president George H. W. Bush ushered in the post-Cold War unipolar world. According to Bob Woodward’s book, The Commanders, Gen. Colin Powell, newly appointed Joint Chief of Staff, stated, “we have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here’.”

A leading jurist decodes the 1989 Panama Massacre: “The invasion was a crime against International Law and the largest US military projection since the Vietnam War.” It is a matter of concern to Canadians as successive governments have annually deployed the Canadian Forces to participate in the US PANAMAX military-naval exercises, usually held in August | JULY YAO” 

Panama City during the US invasion, December 21, 1989. Little was spoken in the monopoly media of the death toll or destruction from that invasion. It was almost entirely focused on the number of US troops killed (23) and wounded (324). The Panamiam death toll was between 4,000 and 7,000 of whom at least 2,000 were buried in mass graves. The destruction left at least 10,000 homeless.