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General
Bantz J. Craddock meets with President Martín Torrijos. SouthCom commander visits Panama by Eric Jackson, from other media On April 4 the head of the US Armed Forces Southern Command, Army General Bantz J. Craddock, was in Panama to meet with top Panamanian officials and review the progress of the New Horizons construction and medical care maneuvers that have been ongoing in the Macaracas area of Los Santos province. In addition to President Torrijos, the general met with Vice President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro, Government and Justice Minister Héctor Alemán and Panama Canal Administrator Alberto Alemán Zubieta. The subjects of the general's closed-door meetings with these officials were generally described by both the US and Panamanian governments as mutual concerns about terrorism, drug trafficking, canal and maritime security and humanitarian assistance programs. The New Horizons maneuvers do render valuable assistance to many needy Panamanians, delivering rural medical and dental attention, building two country schools and improving a third and creating three new multi-purpose community centers. The main reason for the program, however, is to to give mainly National Guard and Reserve units practice that they wouldn't be able to get in the United States. The US construction industry has been successful in getting Congress to ban building activities such as are being carried out in Los Santos because they would be considered unfair competition with the private sector, and down here military medical units will see various tropical diseases and sanitation problems that are not encountered back home but may well be in the course of a future armed forces deployment. Other soldiers are getting practice setting up, operating and guarding an encampment with all the usual facilities. General Craddock, who who rose through the officer corps mainly in armored units in Europe and the Middle East, came to SouthCom after a stint as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's top military advisor, had not been expected to succeed his predecessor, General James T. Hill. However, last November Craddock assumed that post after Hill's contemplated successor, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, was forced into retirement for his role in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Among Craddock's present duties is oversight of the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba, where human rights groups claim that suspected members or supporters of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network have been maltreated. In a March 15 US Senate hearing, Craddock concentrated most of his attention on Colombia, where US forces and American-hired mercenaries are present to support the Bogota government's Plan Colombia, and Venezuela, whose elected government the United States has by various means been trying to depose for the past several years. While the Moscoso administration tilted well beyond Panama's traditional neutrality in Colombia's conflicts and departed from our usual friendship with Venezuela to support these US policies, it appears that the Torrijos administration is quietly pulling back into a more usual Panamanian stance. In his Senate testimony Craddock posed the general problem he faces: "Although Latin America and the Caribbean is generally free of the prospect of cross-border conventional military attacks between nations, it is the world's most violent region, with 27.5 homicides per 100,000 people. This lack of security is a major impediment to the foreign investment needed to strengthen Latin American and Caribbean economies to pull more of the population above the poverty line." He said that the principal threats to stability in the region come from "transnational terrorism, narco-terrorism, illicit trafficking, forgery and money laundering, kidnapping, urban gangs, radical movements, natural disasters and mass migration." He noted a history of Islamic radical activities in the region, but said that it appears that such groups are not using this area to stage attacks against the United States but rather conducting fundraising, logistical and document forging activities here. The New Horizons maneuvers and Craddock's visit elicited a little bit of criticism from Panamanian leftists and others who generally take a dim view of American military activities for ideological reasons, but this has not resonated very well with Panamanian public opinion. Although most Panamanians oppose the war in Iraq and certain other aspects of American foreign policy, for a variety of reasons most people here have a favorable view of US troops.
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