Noriega a Cold War anachronism
If there’s a single historical figure who might serve as an emblem for the awkward moral ambiguities and conflicted political alliances that characterized the waning years of the Cold War, it might well be Manuel Noriega. His timing, if nothing else, was almost perfect.
The former military leader (and hence the de facto ruler) of Panama died Monday at 83 after a long and notorious career that had seen him rise through the ranks of his country’s defense forces — including a stint, along with his mentor Gen. Omar Torrijos, at the former U.S. Army School of the Americas — to the pinnacle of power in his nation by 1981.
Noriega became the kind of “ally” the U.S. preferred to keep under wraps — a ruthless and vindictive dictator who did not hesitate to assassinate political opponents, but who provided the CIA information on guerrilla, terrorist and drug trafficking activities, all for a hefty price.
On a roster of brutal dictators the U.S. tolerated, even supported, in the second half of the 20th century for the dubious virtue of claiming to be “anti-communist,” Noriega eventually became one of the most troublesome. (The term “communist,” Vanderbilt anthropologist and anti-SOA activist Lesley Gill has written of that era, became “an enormously elastic category.”) Our supposed ally in the drug war instead became an ally of the murderous Medellin cocaine cartel, resulting in his 1988 indictment by federal grand juries in Tampa and Miami for massive drug trafficking to the United States.
After Noriega essentially threw out a 1989 election he overwhelmingly lost, President George H.W. Bush urged him to step down — an attempt at a peaceful solution that was almost certainly doomed to frustration, but was nonetheless worth a try — then ordered an invasion of Panama to force the strongman from power.
Noriega holed up in the Vatican embassy, where U.S. troops famously blasted him with Van Halen and other high-octane rock and rap selections (a form of siege that apparently ran afoul of no Geneva Convention rules regarding torture).
Noriega surrendered a few days later, less than a month after the Berlin Wall crumbled half a world away.
Convicted of U.S. drug charges in 1992, Noriega would serve 17 years in federal prison, but under the relatively cushy conditions of an officer prisoner of war rather than a common felon. He then served another seven years in France for money laundering before being returned to Panama to serve the rest of his life behind bars for corruption, embezzlement and multiple grisly murders. He was never a free man for the last 25 years, nor did he ever deserve to be.
Manuel Noriega was an anachronism of the Cold War, a conflict whose larger implications were clear enough (Soviet-style communism is anything but morally ambiguous), but whose practical ramifications created painfully, sometimes lethally awkward alliances.
Noriega reportedly asked for forgiveness in 2015. Surely those not ready to grant it can themselves be forgiven.
This story was originally published May 31, 2017 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Noriega a Cold War anachronism."