FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December, 1999
BUCHANAN: SEND CHINA PACKING FROM PANAMA!
Today Pat Buchanan released the following statement:
"A generation ago, along with Ronald Reagan, I opposed Jimmy Carter's surrender of the Panama Canal. We insisted that the Canal was U.S. property, its retention vital to U.S. security, and its transfer an unacceptable risk. History proved us right. To secure the Canal from a potential threat, a decade ago, President Bush invaded.
"Tuesday's transfer of all U.S. bases in the former Canal Zone, as well as the Big Ditch itself, now leaves this strategic asset in indifferent, and perhaps even hostile, hands.
"The U.S. bases from which we monitored drug flights out of Colombia are gone. Critical U.S. Army training facilities are gone. Now, the Canal, crucial to victory in World War II and our security and prosperity throughout this century, is gone. Ports at both ends of the canal will now be controlled by a company that answers to the beck and call of an increasingly belligerent Beijing. It is a mockery of the Monroe Doctrine for America to stand idly by as Communist Chinese reach for this vital artery of the U.S. Navy and of our $2 trillion world trade.
"Were Theodore Roosevelt alive today, to watch a successor bomb Serbia for 78 days because he said Kosovo was vital to us, as he giddily surrendered the Panama Canal to agents of a dictatorial China, the old Rough Rider would surely have concluded that his country had fallen into the hands of thundering incompetents. And he would be right.
"Only in some strange New World Order of President Clinton's imaginings can a U.S. presence in Bosnia call for a four-year $12 billion U.S. commitment, while the Panama Canal is let go, when a tiny investment of a few millions of dollars could have secured it.
"As President, I will make it the first order of hemispheric business to effect the peaceful expulsion of any and all agents of Beijing from Panama, and to reestablish a U.S. presence in that country."
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