In Moral Terms, a Stunning Defeat : Panama: We bury our dead, and claim victory. Have we damaged our national soul to feed our national ego?

The invasion of Panama, which at first looked like an unqualified military success, has begun to lose some of its luster. The initial ecstasy we experienced is turning to agony as we determine the true costs of this action in human, moral and political terms. As our young soldiers come home in flag-draped coffins, as Panamanians are buried in mass graves, as thousands are made homeless, Gen. Manuel A. Noriega looks on from the safe haven of the Vatican embassy.

The brave American soldiers who have served, suffered and, in some cases, died in Panama deserve our honor. The honor of their service must never be challenged. Many gave the ultimate sacrifice, like Cpl. Garreth C. Isaak, a Marine and native of Greenville, S.C., my hometown.

But we have a duty and an obligation to debate the policies that put young men like Garreth Isaak in Panama and will likely keep others there for some time. We must ask: At what cost to life and limb and principle did we invade a sovereign nation? And what has our invasion accomplished?

No one doubts that Noriega had long since worn out his welcome in Panama. It was clear he should go. He trampled self-determination within and made Panama vulnerable to attack from without.

In fact, at the height of my presidential campaign in 1988, I called upon Noriega to leave. I urged our government to negotiate his relocation to a third-party country in order to avoid precisely this terrible day of blood-letting and chaos. Facilitating such a relocation is how we have handled many other former dictator-allies, like Marcos of the Philippines, Somoza of Nicaragua and the Shah of Iran.

At some point, Noriega, once on the U.S. payroll, fell out of favor. In no time at all, he became a bogyman and an arch-enemy in our government’s eyes, a greater threat to life and human rights than apartheid South Africa or the Chinese government that mowed down hundreds of students in Tien An Men Square, or the government of El Salvador, which has presided over the death of 70,000 of its people in this decade.

In recent weeks in Panama, an American soldier was killed, an American woman was threatened. Usually when Americans are harmed and threatened, we assess national interests and national security. Then we either put other Americans in the area on alert, evacuate them or seal off the area. President Bush instead shifted the focus from his Administration’s secret mission to China and sent in thousands of troops and placed a $1-million bounty on the head of Noriega, Wild West style.

The body count was awful. Twenty-three American soldiers and two civilian American dependents lost their lives in the fighting; 330 American military personnel were wounded. Meanwhile, 297 Panamanian soldiers were killed. Also dead are hundreds of Panamanian civilians, the very people we were supposedly going in to save.

By sending the Stealth fighter against the tiny nation of 2 million people, we must seem to many Panamanians to be using them as guinea pigs for our own military technologies and fantasies.

Today, in the ultimate humiliation after all this loss of life, Gen. Noriega peeps out through the blinds of the Vatican embassy window, looking over a scene of terrible carnage and chaos. He sees our soldiers with their guns drawn and our airplanes flying American youth home in coffins. He sees Panama City in ruins. He must feel satisfaction that he has eluded us.

The loss of America’s moral authority has been great. Most nations in the world, including our allies, have condemned our intervention as a violation of international law and national sovereignty. In Europe, only British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has backed us. In our own hemisphere, the Organization of American States has denounced our actions. Only the blood-stained government of El Salvador applauded the invasion--a dubious endorsement of its morality.

And the war on drugs has been dealt a setback. We have jeopardized the upcoming drug conference in Colombia; Peru has pulled out and others are questioning its significance. What an irony that the invasion, purportedly taken to remove a drug-dealer, could weaken anti-drug efforts.

Finally, we have undermined the global movement toward peaceful democratic change and respect for the rule of law. We have revived a long history of imperial interference in Central America. In the year Soviet troops left Afghanistan, American troops occupied Panama. One wonders if we have damaged our national soul to feed our national ego.

In a world rapidly turning away from military solutions, the American action looks morally untenable and obsolete. The democratic revolution sweeping Eastern Europe is the product of popular upsurge, the movement of masses of people toppling dictators.

A people in motion can achieve legitimacy far better than a people ducking bullets. President Guillermo Endara, the victor in the May Panama election, who was sworn in at nighttime at a U.S. military base in a situation reminiscent of a shotgun wedding, does not seem to have the moral authority that accompanies a popular revolution.

President Bush, who was understandably annoyed with Noriega, has failed to grasp the democratic spirit of the time. Democracy is not created at the point of a bayonet. It is something that people of nations are making with their own hands and hearts and minds. As the leader of the free world, we must never run the risk of being a first-rate military power and a second-rate moral power.