Posted on 03/29/2009 8:33:49 AM PDT by Titus-Maximus
While running for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, Ronald Reagan stumbled onto an issue that energized his upstart campaign. In stop after stop, he recalled, people expressed “utter disbelief” that an American president — the Republican incumbent, Gerald R. Ford — would even think of relinquishing control over the Panama Canal. Knowing next to nothing about its history, but quite a lot about the politics of flag-waving, Reagan quickly turned the canal into a symbol of American resolve in an increasingly dangerous and disrespectful world. “We bought it, we paid for it, it’s ours,” he told the cheering crowds, and “we are going to keep it.” What was so special about the Canal Zone? Why this allegiance to a distant spot of land, 10 miles wide and 50 miles long, that many Americans would have trouble finding on a map? The answer lies in the mythology that has surrounded the canal since its opening, in 1914. America had not only pulled off one of the greatest engineering feats in history, it had succeeded where France had failed. It was our technology, our science and our leadership that had carried the day. Even better, we had shared the blessings of this modern marvel with the entire world, once again showing our selfless intent. What clearer example could there be of America’s distinctiveness, its ability to shape the future, to get big things done?
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I remember one main selling point on giving it back. That General running Panama (Torrejos?) kept threatening guerrilla and sabotage actions against the canal unless we caved in and simply gave it over to them.
And coming just a few years after Vietnam, they wouldnt dare stand up to him for making such a threat.
Well of course success and ability is racist. Just look at what the blue-eyed devils have accomplished so successfully all over the world. It’s just gotta be racist to consistently perform that well.
And when the Slimes files for Chapter 11 - they will still have no idea why they lost their business.
The “White Racist” meme is popping up more and more.
There is a Black President, Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice. Blacks own businesses, some are billionaires, others are judges.
If the left can’t flog the race issue, it dies. And frankly, even the leftys I deal with have declared war over. They don’t want to hear anymore.
Flogging Whitey is a huge mistake in their arsenal.
Didn’t Jimmy Carter give away our canal?
FWIW, America at the time the canal was built was a proudly racist nation. It was probably about the highpoint of racist ideology in this country. Policies at the canal were handled accordingly.
I spent three years in Panama in the mid-80s. You could write a 3,000 page book on Panama and its vast soap opera (I don’t even refer to it as history).
The French-US angle? The French tried to make this simple and just DIG...with no locks. The Americans looked over the whole thing and figured three huge locks....making one of the largest largest man-made lakes in the world....and putting in a hydro-electric plant to boot. The American version worked.
Corruption? Frankly, Panama cannot exist in any form...without corruption...even today. I had to pay an extra $20, on top of the normal $15 inspection fee...to have my car ‘passed’ (it was brand-new).
My German wife upon arriving there....needed a license. I went downtown and chatted with the guy in charge...and he merely winked while asking if my wife knew how to drive, and I said yes (she didn’t)....and passed a $20...ten minutes later, she had her first license....no test required of a person who had never driven in her life.
The dozen or so canal engineers that I came to know over my period there....all American guys in the forties and fifies....were mostly alcoholics who would consume a case of beer between six AM to six PM....we won’t even count what they consumed after the sun went down.
Every single Panamanian political figure had this idea that the canal generated profit...vast profit. The Canal Commission kept the channel fee down between $30k and $60k for most vessels (at that point in time). All of the money that came in....barely paid daily operations. Any updating of anything...came out of the US federal budget (something that Panamanians couldn’t understand). To make any profit at all...you’d have to raise the channel fee by three to four times...which was questionable if freighters would pay that much.
As long as whites continue to roll over (or bend over) for this tripe and then vote for incompetent and dangerous blacks, racist authors will keep ginning up the “issue.”
I’m just now watching a DVR’d History Channel show on the ALCAN highway.
Made a big deal of Roosevelt sending 4000 black engineers up there against the wishes of the Military command there. They had to promise to keep them away from the towns and villages. The 3-Star Gen Buckner(sp?), a southerner, (Democrat?) was afraid they would mingle with the locals and “create the worst looking race in the history of the world”
We whites are so evil don’t you know. Why no mention of no slavery involved in the building of the canal ?
Panama succeeded from Colombia after being egged on by the U.S. with promises of prosperity brought about with a canal, promises the U.S. richly kept. The Panamanians would never have welcomed reincorporation into Colombia.
Alot of white men died building that canal...
http://www.history.umd.edu/Bio/greene.html
Julie Greene specializes in United States labor and working-class history. Her research and teaching interests span across immigration and political history, the history of empire, and transnational approaches to the history of the Americas. Greene recently completed The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal (Penguin Press, 2009). Recent articles include “Spaniards on the Silver Roll: Liminality and Labor Troubles in the Panama Canal Zone, 1904-1914,” in International Labor and Working-Class History (Fall 2004) and “The Labor of Empire: Recent Scholarship on U.S. History and Imperialism,” in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas (Summer 2004). She is also author of Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881-1917 (Cambridge, 1998), and co-editor, with Eric Arnesen and Bruce Laurie, of Labor Histories: Class, Politics, and the Diversity of the Working-Class Experience (Illinois, 1998).
Professor Greene has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others. She was founding Reviews Editor in 2004 of Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, and continues to serve as an editor of the journal. Labor received the Council of Editors of Learned Journals Award for Best New Journal in 2005. Greene was founding Co-Chair of the Labor and Working-Class History Association in 1997-1999, and has worked in numerous ways with the organization since that time. She has also been active with the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (serving currently on the editorial board of its journal) and with the Organization of American Historians.
“then it degenerated into more white racism as the author bemoans the fact that white Americans got the best jobs. All of history must be looked through the revolutionary glasses of race. What a tiring waste this discourse has become.”
You are correct.
I would like to write another book calling her a liar.
I especially liked the part of “prime living quarters.” All of us lived in the old French quarters (the housing the French had built) for years which were dumps. Nobody told us they were “prime.” It must have been a secret.
“White Americans received six weeks of vacation each year.”
Not researched by author:
1. American Panama Canal workers, no matter their color, got 8 weeks and not 6.
Why? It was an incentive to get Americans here. The extra weeks were included so folks could return home to the states and visit their relatives. Travel then was by ship.
Later on, vacations were cut back to please the whiners, like this woman, who write books from afar and think they know it all. But that was okay. We still preferred to live in the Canal Zone than any other place in the world.
The running joke concerning our congresscrooks when they would come here to visit (vacation) was after 3 days they were experts on the Panama Canal, and if they stayed 4 day, they would go home and write a book.
2. Non U.S. received 4 weeks vacation a year.
(Sorry folks, I would love to stay, but I need to get ready for lunch with my brother and sister-in-law. I will return in a couple of hours.)
Nothing has changed in five hundred years, to get anything done in this country you have to slip a few bills to the guy or gal waiting on you. Before all you American haters start your crap that the US is the same, I never had to pay a bribe to get anything done in the States. As bad as you think America is it is still the best country in the world.
****************
Amen. Even now.
Liberals see race in everything and racism is under every rock. Its so destructive.
“The dozen or so canal engineers that I came to know over my period there....all American guys in the forties and fiies....were mostly alcoholics who would consume a case of beer between six AM to six PM....we won’t even count what they consumed after the sun went down.”
Just because you ran around with the wrong group, the rest of us were not.
This speaks a lot about yourself.
You were nothing more than a tourist stationed here as were every other military personnel.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.