Showing Muscle

• Share

All afternoon George Bush acted the gracious host to 50 old friends and family members at a White House Christmas party, singing carols and taking groups of children on the ultimate guided tour (only the presidential bedroom was off limits). As the guests were leaving, a group of men slipped from behind the security screens on the ground floor and headed for the elevator to the family living quarters. But their timing was slightly off. They ran into the last departing guest, a woman who recognized them: Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. "Oh, oh," the woman remarked. "Business as usual."

Not quite. The group was on its way to plan the biggest U.S. military operation since Viet Nam: the invasion of Panama, launched two nights later. But perhaps she was not totally mistaken. If war preparations are scarcely usual in the Bush White House, they are not as stunningly out of character as they would have seemed only a few months ago. The Panama invasion marks the latest, but far from the first, stage in a monumental transformation of George Bush: from a President whose overriding imperative during his initial months in office was to avoid doing "something dumb," to a self-confident chief mapping a bold and individual -- if not always prudent -- foreign policy that he is quite willing to back with military force.

Nor does Bush hesitate these days to take long risks. The Panama invasion was supposed to accomplish three goals: 1) swiftly rout resistance; 2) capture the country's dictator, Manuel Antonio Noriega, and bring him to trial in the U.S. on drug-running charges; 3) install a stable, democratic government headed by politicians who had apparently won May elections, which Noriega later overruled.

But if the invasion turned out to be less than fully successful, the Administration would be running grave dangers. At the extreme, it could bog down in a Viet Nam-style guerrilla war directed by a fugitive Noriega in the jungles. The Panamanian government that the U.S. installed may be regarded as American puppets; President Guillermo Endara was sworn in by a Panamanian judge, but on an American military base at about the time the attack started. A drawn-out crisis could sour U.S. relations with other Latin American nations, eternally nervous about Yanqui intervention against however noxious a government.

It was impossible to tell whether the invasion would end up more like Viet Nam or more like Grenada. Some 24,000 U.S. troops had quickly taken command of most of Panama and overwhelmed organized resistance by the Panama Defense Forces, Noriega's combination army and police. But Noriega got away and was thought to be hiding in the forests or even in the sprawling capital city; the U.S. offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture.