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editorial

A military academy is a bad idea, but it may spark a good debate

Our National Police chief has asked ARI for a large chunk of land at the former Fort Davis on which to establish a private military academy at the high school level. The suggestion has revived bitter memories of the abuses during decades of military rule, and ferocious opposition based upon those.

It is to be expected that someone like Miguel Antonio Bernal, who was beaten nearly to death, forced off the radio airwaves and driven into exile by the former dictatorship, wouldn't have anything good to think or say about the possible revival of a military caste. It is to be expected that the likes of Bobby Eisenmann, whose newspaper was shut down and smashed up and who was like Bernal and so many others was also forced into exile, would also take a dim view of anything resembling militarism. President Torrijos may have good reason to think that the Truth Commission's original marching orders were founded upon partisan bias, but he would have no reason in the world to expect that the atrocities it documented wouldn't live on in the form of public opinions that limit his practical options to this day.

A specialized private military high school founded upon a public subsidy is a bad idea, even by the lights of the social reforming militarist tradition of General José Remón and General Omar Torrijos. Before Remón's time the Guardia's officer corps was a white upper-class caste, and its opening to a much broader segment of society was the platform upon which Torrijismo --- and also the career of one Manuel Antonio Noriega --- arose.

Why did Panama abolish the military after the 1989 US invasion? For lots of reasons. One of these, and really the most sensible one, is that as a matter of sound public financial practices our little country just can't afford to support a privileged military elite. The public debate at the time, however, concentrated on the widespread brutality and corruption that characterized the Panama Defense Forces in their final years.

One argument that didn't play very much of a role in the debate was the notion that Panama would never have to defend itself. Yes, there were on the part of some Panamanians lazy and servile presumptions that the Americans would always do it for us. Yes, there were people who assumed that so long as all nations get to use the canal, nobody would ever want to attack us. But the idea that Panama might have to defend itself was enshrined in the constitutional amendment that abolished the military, which provided that in the event of an insurrection or attack by a foreign power the country would be defended by a militia under the command of the National Police.

Well, fine --- except that due to deeply felt objections to any sort of militarism, the country has never taken the steps needed to make such a militia system a reality.

It's not reasonable to expect that in a national emergency the cops could just start handing out assault rifles and point yesterday's untrained civilians in the direction of an enemy force and not suffer a disastrous defeat. History gives us too many examples to the contrary.

A civilian militia must be recruited and trained well in advance of any emergency, and arsenals must be in place for their rapid mobilization.

There are plenty of places in which our police can get military training sufficient to have cadre who become the officers and noncoms of a national militia. In fact this is happening and has been happening for a number of years. We don't need a private military high school to meet this special educational need.

For rich families with misbehaving sons, there are plenty of military academies abroad to which the rotten little punks can be exported for lessons in discipline. The Panamanian people should not be expected to add more privileges to the privileged classes when our public school system is so woefully underfunded.

But still, since the invasion Panama has been attacked by Middle Eastern terrorists in the 1994 commuter plane bombing, by right-wing Colombian paramilitaries and left-wing Colombian guerrillas, and by heavily armed criminal gangs with quasi-military organization. We have never been able to defend ourselves from these rather low-intensity attacks, and would stand no chance against a really determined attack aimed at our conquest mounted by any one of the current combatant factions in Colombia.

Ah, but we can rely on the Americans for that, right?

Wrong. The Colombian faction that has attacked Panama most frequently during the past decade, the AUC paramilitary, may be on the Bush White House's terrorist list, but it has from its inception been an unofficial appendage of the US-supported Colombian Army and is to this day an integral part of the US-backed Plan Colombia. And then there was the Bush administration's support for a Cuban-American terrorist attempt to kill hundreds of innocent Panamanians by setting off a powerful bomb at the University of Panama. Our enemies' friends may not be our enemies, but they are by definition unreliable allies.

So Panama does need to start thinking about how to defend itself, even if the police chief's idea is faulty. Let us hope that the flawed suggestion is more than just an opportunity to recall old nightmares and rekindle old enmities, but rather the stumbling first step in a needed discussion about how Panama should implement the defense system for which our constitution calls.