Panama City LA PRENSA (in Spanish) pg, 27A — [By Betty Brannan Jaen]

Washington — The U.S. military intervention in Somalia apparently will be George Bush’s farewell gesture from the presidency. The U.S. people, pained by terrible television reports on the suffering of the Somali people, have expressed their support for their government’s decision. Some political observers (U.S. as well as foreign) have said that the intervention violates international law and Somalia’s sovereignty.

The invasion of Panama is often mentioned in those kinds of debates, always as an example of an evil intervention in contrast with the humanitarian intervention in Somalia. To cite just one example, Raymond Bonner wrote in The New York Times:

“The use of combat troops for humanitarian purposes is preferred to and is much more honorable than the invasions of Grenada and Panama.”

Such comments make it obvious how misunderstood the Panamanian tragedy is. It also shows how North Americans mistakenly view U.S. Government policies. What is really appalling is to notice the similarities rather than the contrasts between the crisis that exists there now and that which Panama endured.

In an interview with National Public Radio, Hibaaq Osman, a Somali who is one of the leaders of the Fund for Peace, angrily rejected the idea that the intervention in her country is illegitimate. [Passage omitted]

No concept of sovereignty should hamper an intervention like this one. It is not that a humanitarian crisis is above sovereignty, as some have argued, but that sovereignty is something much more profound than territorial integrity and political autonomy, elements that only complement the essence of the concept:

A nation’s sovereignty dwells in its people and consists, as Thomas Jefferson said, in the people’s inalienable right to life and liberty. Any force that violates that right is usurping the people’s sovereignty, even if that force is domestic. Any force that acts to protect that right is bringing sovereignty back to whom it belongs, even if the force is foreign.

_{FBIS-LAT-92-244, 18 Dec. 1992, pp. 21-22}