What was there about the Vietnam War that is so relevant to the blatant intervention of U.S. military forces into Panama?There is a common thread connecting these two events. The connection reveals that the U.S. government is an international outlaw. Washington disregards not only international treaties, obligations and laws which it has solemnly agreed to, it disregards its own laws as well. These U.S. laws have been enacted by its own Congress, and furthermore are codified in the Constitution.
It is now almost 26 years since two lone senators got up on the floor of the U.S. Senate and declared that they were opposed to U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. They objected on the elementary basis that it was illegal for then-President Lyndon Johnson to commit U.S. forces to Vietnam without congressional approval. The Johnson administration was acting in defiance of a constitutional provision which every school child was taught--that only Congress can declare war, and only Congress can appropriate funds for such purposes.
Will members of Congress today stand up and demand that their constitutional mandate be respected. We are seeing instead a steamroller in which Senator Dodd is helping to whip the Democratic "opposition" into line.
It took 50,000 U.S. lives and millions of Vietnamese casualties, plus the wanton destruction of property and untold damage to the environment, for Congress to heed the voice of the people struggling against the war. Congress finally passed a law called the War Powers Act. This law specifically and categorically forbids the president from committing U.S. troops without Congress sanctioning it first.
Legislation won through struggle
The War Powers Act was passed in October 1973, at a time when millions and millions of students and workers all over the world were on the march against the U.S. war in Vietnam, one of the most vicious imperialist interventions of modern times.One would think that the matter would end there, that the law bound the hands of the president and the military establishment. But the matter did not end there. President Richard Nixon vetoed the law, and the struggle began all over again. But such was the nature of the mass struggle in the streets, both here and in world capitals abroad, that Congress then mustered enough votes to override the veto by more than the two-thirds majority necessary to put the law on the books.
Both the War Powers Act of 1973 and the constitutional provision are so crystal clear, so comprehensible, that even a child can understand them: neither troops nor money can be legally used for a foreign military intervention without some cover of law.
Invasion of Grenada
Yet only ten years later, President Ronald Reagan completely and totally disregarded the constitutional and legislative prohibition when he blatantly sent troops to Grenada. The result was an act of international outlawry rivaling anything in the history of the contemporary epoch. So loud was the international outcry, so many were the condemnations of other countries, that even U.S. imperialism's most loyal ally abroad, the Thatcher government, felt obligated to vote for a resolution in the UN condemning the U.S.At this writing, we are faced with the same situation in Panama. What lesson emerges from all this?
That a capitalist government which is run by the biggest bankers and industrialists is a law unto itself. Whatever it does is in its own interests only. It has nothing but contempt for the masses. It is scornful of public opinion in general and of the working class and oppressed people in particular.
Washington does not heed the masses unless they take to the streets, unless they show a willingness to fight outside the halls of Congress, unless they take on the capitalist government as the real adversary of all who are oppressed, exploited and persecuted at home and abroad.
Extra-territorial sovereignty
This government of bankers and industrialists, the real criminals in the so-called drug war, is today attempting to extradite citizens of another country without the consent of the government of that country. This is really an assertion of the old colonialist extra-territorial sovereignty, a legal gimmick utilized by Britain, France, Holland and other old colonialist powers in the 19th century, and later by the U.S.It means that the jurisdiction of the colonial power extends to the territories which it has conquered abroad. Therefore, the laws and customs of the predatory imperialist powers are the superior laws in the colonized country, and prevail over and above any of the laws of the conquered and occupied territory.
It was this kind of arrogance which ultimately caused the undoing of the colonialist powers in India, China, Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere.
Washington's demand to extradite Noriega is such an outrageous act of imperialist aggression that no country which has regard for its own laws could possibly agree to it. Could the U.S. make the same demands upon its imperialist allies--Britain , France, West Germany and others? Could the U.S. on its own send a military mission to any one of these capitalist countries to kidnap one of its government officials without provoking an all-out war?
Yet the Bush administration has embarked upon precisely such a course in Panama, and only because Panama is a poor, small country occupied militarily and controlled financially by the U.S.
It is preposterous to say that Noriega declared war against the U.S. What Noriega said was that the constant military provocations and preparations for a U.S. military intervention were creating a state of war in Panama.
`Freedom' to be dragged into war
How hollow is the talk of "peace" and the "new era of democracy" in the light of this military intervention. What hypocrisy it is to write mountains of words in praise of "democracy" and "freedom" abroad when the masses here at home are so deprived of these very rights that their sons and daughters can be sent to participate in an illegal and monstrous attack against a small neighboring country. This brutal assault has neither congressional approval nor the shadow of a cover of law.
Only organized struggle of the workers and oppressed in this country, together with the fraternal support of the worldwide working class and other oppressed people, can stop the mad adventures of the Bush administration and its Pentagon militarists.