Passing The Manhood Test Operation

By Ed Magnuson

"It was probably the best-conceived military operation since World War II," declared retired Army Chief of Staff General Edward Meyer. Insisted a veteran enlisted man in Panama: "From a professional military point of view, this operation will go down as a brilliant success." For the U.S. military, said a senior Pentagon officer who had no doubt that the G.I.s had passed the exam with flying colors, "the Panama invasion was a test of manhood."

Although the judges were hardly impartial, few military experts dissent from their glowing assessments of Operation Just Cause. The praise was a welcome shift. Except for the U.S. air strike on Libya in 1986, American military performance since Viet Nam has been miserable. In 1983 commanders in Lebanon failed to erect defenses to prevent a mere truck from crashing into a Marine barracks and killing 241 American servicemen with a load of explosives. The invasion of Grenada that same year was ultimately successful, but so botched that 18 Americans died even though the island was defended only by a ragtag of Cuban construction workers and Cuban and Grenadian soldiers.

Tactically, Grenada and Panama were vastly different. The Grenada strike was thrown together in two days adhering to a foolish requirement that it be a joint operation of all U.S. services. As a result, command lines were blurred and coordination was poor. Navy commanders could not talk to their counterparts in the Army and the Air Force because their radios were incompatible. The troops had difficulty finding the American students they had been sent to liberate.

The Panama attack, in contrast, had been planned and polished for months. Some 13,000 U.S. troops were already in place at well-stocked bases. They provided intelligence on opposing forces and protection for the arriving invaders. Most significant, Panama was mainly an Army show, though small units of Navy SEALs and Marines were involved. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Colin Powell squelched interservice rivalries and gave the two top on-site Army generals, Maxwell Thurman, head of the U.S. Southern Command, and Carl Stiner, the Task Force Commander, clear authority to direct the attacks. Says retired Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf III, who commanded the Grenada task force: "In Panama they had a lot of time to prepare, and they did a hell of a job; they were able to tailor things a lot better."

The result was U.S. troops quickly knocked out any hope that the 12,000- member Panama Defense Forces might have had of making a coordinated counterattack on invasion night. "The whole infrastructure of our forces was destroyed in the first hour," admitted Major Ivan Gaytan, a top P.D.F. planner. Though some Pentagon planners had anticipated 70 U.S. military deaths, the figure was 23. Noriega's irregular Dignity Battalions raised more havoc than expected with sniper fire and hit-and-run attacks in Panama City streets. But when Lieut. Colonel Luis del Cid, Manuel Noriega's most trusted military aide, waved a white flag over his fortress in Chiriqui province and Noriega deserted his fighters to save his skin, resistance faded.

Inevitably there were mistakes. Many paratroopers missed their landing zones. The shelling of Noriega's Comandancia headquarters destroyed houses in the adjacent Chorrillo neighborhood, where many poor people live. Air attacks on the San Miguelito area were devastating. The U.S. embassy said 300 Panamanian civilians died (unofficial estimates go as high as 800), an alarming toll. Many Panamanians criticized the failure of the Americans to move against the looting that engulfed Panama City. "There should have been troops placed along commercial arteries," complained Steve Maduro, a past director of Panama's Chamber of Commerce. "Our police force was nonexistent, and it was utter chaos for three days."

Yet Operation Just Cause quickly removed Noriega from power and gave a new government a chance to take root. As a bonus, it recovered some 48,000 weapons that might one day have been turned against Americans or sent off to El Salvador as part of Noriega's gun running to rebels there. In Panama, American . servicemen fully earned the kind of medals that were so lavishly dispensed after Grenada.

With reporting by James Carney/Panama City and Bruce van Voorst/Washington