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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 28, 1981
PAGE 13
ical price--election defeats in 1978 and 1980. Had Mr. Reagan been in office
between 1976-80 (he had made the canal an election issue in his unsuccessful
1976 bid for Republican nomination) no new treaties would have been forth
coming.
The WASHINGTON POST, while editorially recogn1z1ng Torrijos' stature among
his own people, went too far in stating that the strongman "relieved the
United States of an imperial burden that it had picked up in another age."
It's as if one can thank a purse snatcher for relieving the owner of her
"burden."
Columnist Patrick J. Buchanan lashed out at the liberal POST's denigrating
idea of America's "imperial burden":
Yes, I suppose that is one way of remembering the final harvest of
Manifest Destiny, of gazing upon one of the great engineering marvels
of mankind, of reflecting upon the Age of Confidence, the Era of Teddy,
the Republic that Never Retreats•••.
Like a fool and his money, a frivolous nation and its overseas posses
sions are soon parted.
Great empires and little minds go ill
together••.•
"Torrijos Is Buried Near Canal He won for the Panamanian People."
Reflect on that headline: It says much about what we call, respect
fully, "The Third World." Much of the Third World does not erect: it
does not create. It expropriates. The pioneer spirit replaced by the
squatter mentality••••
How can the Panamanian people take pride in what Torrijos "won"--when
neither these people, nor their fathers, contributed the ingenuity, the
vision, the wealth, the labor, the suffering that produced this wonder
of the modern world? Without pride, is it any wonder the jungle is
coming to reclaim the roads constructed and kept immaculate by the
departing Americans? Civilization retreats: we call it progress.
The final chapters of the Panama Canal saga still remain to be written.
United States has already lost much, but with American engineers and
diers still on the scene, future troubles are assured. The U.S. has not
totally kicked out of its isthmian birthright.
The
sol
been
Author R. M. Koster, quoted earlier, said: "The only certainties for Pana
ma's future are turmoil and unease."
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau