FRISCO

Hello everybody. I was talking about this with my best friend some time ago and we couldn't come to an agreement.

I strongly believe that the Panama Canal should belong to the US and not to Panama. It was built by and paid for by the US to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars of US tax money. The US even paid for the zone where it was built (Canal Zone). And I'm not even talking about the Americas Bridge.

Just because of some anti-American riots the US decided to turn the Canal and the Canal Zone over to Panama... for free? I don't get it. I don't want to sound mean or anything but Panama owes pretty much everything to the US.

I would love to have your input on this.

FRISCO

soltero

kidchico

It's called Jimmy Carter, yet another screw-up in a failure of a presidency.

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Ben

www.myspace.com/leakedsaturn

soltero

Well, that's your opinion, and you are of course entitled to it. But the fact is, the push for a revised canal treaty began with Lyndon Johnson and was subsequently supported by Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter simply brokered the final deal, after passage in US Congress. For an excellent summary (from 1977), see: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...945800,00.html

panamaoffshorelegal

What does the US really own? It's trillions of dollars in debt... to the tune of over $70,000 per household.

The US doesn't "own" anything. It owes.

The United States uses over 30% of the world's resources while only having 5% of it's population.

I think the US needs to start giving a little more back.

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FRISCO

Thanks for your replies. There are some interesting points. Even though the excellent articles you provided soltero gave me the historical facts I am still of the same opinion.

Which president is to blame doesn't seem to matter that much. A lot of them were involved anyway, right up to Clinton who could have stopped the final handover. They surrendered the Canal to gain points with Panamanians, and to the damage (and against the will) of average Americans who now have to pay even more taxes to make up for the lost income.

I don't think that kind of altruism makes any sense, but maybe it does and there is something I don't know. Doesn't Panama owe its very existence as an independent state to US influence? Why would we come crawling to them on our knees and ask them to please like us and accept the Canal as a gift? Did we get anything tangible out of this deal?

I still think that America should be the rightful owner of the Panama Canal. Why should Panama get the profits of something that they didn't build and could have never built on their own? They should at least have paid back all the expenses and then some. How can we get the Canal back?

FRISCO

panamaoffshorelegal

Maybe America will start paying for all of the people it kills in wars that are nothing more than "for profit business".

Iraq
Viet Nam
Korea
El Salvador
Haiti
Panama - 27 targets bombed similtaneously in '89 to get Noriega, 4000 civilians killed and talk of experimental weapons like lasers being used -- http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...94886473591816

and on and on

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soltero

As far as the "payback": The US did collect the fees from canal transits, for 100 years -- and it was a very tidy sum.

My opinion is that you're missing the bigger picture: As one of those articles pointed out, the US needs a stable, safe Panama as much as Panama needs the US. If the US had not returned the canal, Panama would very likely now be a left-leaning trouble spot (like Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, et. al.). As it is, Panama is one of the strongest US allies in Latin America -- and that's without receiving $5 billion in annual aid, as is the case with Colombia. Yes, I suppose the US could have bombed the country into submission and sent 100,000 troops to quell the restless natives -- but how long can the US keep doing that, and in how many different parts of the world?