Bicentennial Man: Ford '76 and Beyond
- Thread starter KingSweden24
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Operation Balboa
"...Operation Balboa (Span: Operacion Balboa) was the Panamanian military operation to attack the Panama Canal in the early morning of January 16th, 1978, and was the first combat of the Panama War. Commenced during and after the American football championship Super Bowl the preceding day, the Panamanian military attacked the Canal Zone both with regular and irregular forces starting at 00:15 local time and escalating operations at dawn, taking advantage of confusion on the American side, the depletion of the US military in the wake of the Vietnam War, and many regular Canal Zone forces being home on holiday leave with newer recruits having been rotated in during the week before.
US military intelligence, as well as the CIA, did not have any forewarning or prediction of the attack in the weeks before; it is regarded as the largest American intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor..."
- Wikipedia entry on "Operation Balboa"
"...fundamentally, Torrijos was not a Communist. He was a left-wing nationalist, sure, but he also lined his own pockets and was in the end a military guy who used populist measures like land reform to keep the people happy while he and his friends kept himself rich. But he had his eyes set on the Canal, and he was very much in tune with what was said about him in other countries, and the debate in the US painting him as Fidel 2.0 outraged him, to the point that when he finally attacked the Canal - while we were all asleep after the Super Bowl, at that - he opened his arm to Cuban volunteers, to FARC volunteers, anybody who wanted to attack US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. So no, Torrijos was not a Communist at first, but we forced him to get into bed with them. That's my view and it has always been my view and always will be my view."
- Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
"...substantial reductions in US troops in the Canal Zone had been policy for some time and after Vietnam the "Peacetime Army" was a shell of what it had been just three or four years earlier. Panama was a gnat compared to us but they came prepared, and that was some brutal fighting, in the middle of the night, all across the Canal Zone. Their strategic depth was nonexistent of course but Torrijos had the people on his side, he was already popular, and he had made taking the Canal an issue of national pride. Suddenly, he was a hero to the Latin left; the David who had struck at the Goliath. Just a week earlier there'd been huge riots in Nicaragua after one of Somoza's critics was assassinated; that all swelled. The regime in El Salvador seemed to be teetering. Fighting escalated in the jungles in Colombia, and there were rallies in Chile, where socialists actually stuck their heads out for the first time in god knows how long. It was only going to get uglier..."
- Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner, 1994 Interview [1]
"...the Panamanians actually secured control of both sides of the Canal at the Colon end within hours, and we had pretty much lost the Panama City end by mid-morning, buttressed on both ends. The fighting around the Miraflores Locks was ugly; you had grenades going off everywhere, artillery pounding a completely surrounded position, machine gun fire so thick that there wasn't an inch of free space. That was probably the most comparable fighting to Tet '68 or Korea. There was no safe harbor in the city, which Panamanian forces had just swept through, where the people were being handed weapons to serve in "Popular Forces." It was the Cuban Revolution and Suez Crisis in one go. Torrijos wasn't Castro or Nasser, no, but this was exactly the confluence of events I'd try to warn about, that I'd counseled prudency against. We'd reached the juncture where we were in a war whether we wanted one or not..."
- Former Secretary of State George Bush, "Bush on Panama," Southern Methodist University Lecture Series, 2003
[1] Decided just to use Carter's uncontroversial pick here as Poppy's replacement at Langley
US military intelligence, as well as the CIA, did not have any forewarning or prediction of the attack in the weeks before; it is regarded as the largest American intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor..."
- Wikipedia entry on "Operation Balboa"
"...fundamentally, Torrijos was not a Communist. He was a left-wing nationalist, sure, but he also lined his own pockets and was in the end a military guy who used populist measures like land reform to keep the people happy while he and his friends kept himself rich. But he had his eyes set on the Canal, and he was very much in tune with what was said about him in other countries, and the debate in the US painting him as Fidel 2.0 outraged him, to the point that when he finally attacked the Canal - while we were all asleep after the Super Bowl, at that - he opened his arm to Cuban volunteers, to FARC volunteers, anybody who wanted to attack US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. So no, Torrijos was not a Communist at first, but we forced him to get into bed with them. That's my view and it has always been my view and always will be my view."
- Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
"...substantial reductions in US troops in the Canal Zone had been policy for some time and after Vietnam the "Peacetime Army" was a shell of what it had been just three or four years earlier. Panama was a gnat compared to us but they came prepared, and that was some brutal fighting, in the middle of the night, all across the Canal Zone. Their strategic depth was nonexistent of course but Torrijos had the people on his side, he was already popular, and he had made taking the Canal an issue of national pride. Suddenly, he was a hero to the Latin left; the David who had struck at the Goliath. Just a week earlier there'd been huge riots in Nicaragua after one of Somoza's critics was assassinated; that all swelled. The regime in El Salvador seemed to be teetering. Fighting escalated in the jungles in Colombia, and there were rallies in Chile, where socialists actually stuck their heads out for the first time in god knows how long. It was only going to get uglier..."
- Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner, 1994 Interview [1]
"...the Panamanians actually secured control of both sides of the Canal at the Colon end within hours, and we had pretty much lost the Panama City end by mid-morning, buttressed on both ends. The fighting around the Miraflores Locks was ugly; you had grenades going off everywhere, artillery pounding a completely surrounded position, machine gun fire so thick that there wasn't an inch of free space. That was probably the most comparable fighting to Tet '68 or Korea. There was no safe harbor in the city, which Panamanian forces had just swept through, where the people were being handed weapons to serve in "Popular Forces." It was the Cuban Revolution and Suez Crisis in one go. Torrijos wasn't Castro or Nasser, no, but this was exactly the confluence of events I'd try to warn about, that I'd counseled prudency against. We'd reached the juncture where we were in a war whether we wanted one or not..."
- Former Secretary of State George Bush, "Bush on Panama," Southern Methodist University Lecture Series, 2003
[1] Decided just to use Carter's uncontroversial pick here as Poppy's replacement at Langley
1978 Great Northeastern Snowstorm
"...a week earlier you'd had a snowstorm down in Ohio and then a gigantic one, one of the worst in history, hits New York a week later. That was the first big challenge for Dad, who had barely been Mayor a month at that point, and Governor Carey was down there frequently, both of them personally shoveling snow and coordinating with the fire department, the sanitation department, to really get everything cleared out. They had it way worse up in Boston and New England, sure, yeah. That's true. But what Dad really showed was that he cared, that he "got it." Instead of having plows going to the Upper East Side first they were going out to Brooklyn. Dad was in Jamaica, in a working class Italian neighborhood full of delivery drivers, firefighters, people like that, shoveling snow out of their driveways, talking to people. Making them felt heard, which they'd never done when Lindsay was around and Program for Action fell apart. That was when the buzz really started in the city... we've got a mayor who cares. And that's how "Cuomo Cares" got started..."
- Senator Andrew Cuomo, "Remembering Mayor Mario Cuomo: 1932-2015" [1]
[1] For those curious - no, we will not be going down a "President Cuomo" route here, at least not Mario (no promises with his kid, who will be a character throughout the timeline, though no decisions made yet beyond him becoming a Senator rather than Governor). But New York, along with San Francisco and a few other cities, will get some focused attention throughout the TL
- Senator Andrew Cuomo, "Remembering Mayor Mario Cuomo: 1932-2015" [1]
[1] For those curious - no, we will not be going down a "President Cuomo" route here, at least not Mario (no promises with his kid, who will be a character throughout the timeline, though no decisions made yet beyond him becoming a Senator rather than Governor). But New York, along with San Francisco and a few other cities, will get some focused attention throughout the TL
Rhodesia Shocks the World
"...it was a pretty major announcement, for a white-ruled African state to declare that it would "accept" multiracial democracy within two years. And so the clock was ticking now in Rhodesia; Ian Smith would almost certainly be gone. So the question was, who did the West want to come out ahead? MI-6 had a fairly robust profile on the various players within ZANU, and we really liked Muzorewa and Sithole, because they had cachet within their respective ethnic groups and didn't have ties to the ugliness in Mozambique, like Mugabe. Even though the Americans had their hands full with Panama, it became "known" to us, via official and unofficial channels, that we were expected to take the lead on matters regarding Rhodesia but that Washington desired a "united front" on the matter at the UN, in order to bring the Bush War to a close. What we were really curious about, of course, was how Pretoria was going to take things..."
- Lord David Owen, former British Foreign Secretary, "Lancaster House at 25"
"...suffice to say that while Rhodesia wasn't our main priority in 1978 or 1979, with all the other shit flying around in the world, it was one area where Dick Scranton down at the UN really had an opportunity to put forth some muscular American leadership. There was some controversy here at home in the black community - not that too many people in the black community were keeping close tabs on the inner-workings of Rhodesian African nationalist politics, I'm talking academic types, radicals, that sort of thing - about us getting in behind leaders who were willing to negotiate and work with the Smith regime, but it was time to forge ahead. George [Bush] even saw what we did in Rhodesia as a potential blueprint in South Africa, as a way to maybe transition to a more racially sensitive regime. Of course, the ANC was way more red, if you know what I mean, than Muzorewa's group in Rhodesia, to put it mildly, and the policy of trying to gently nudge Pretoria continued even though George really did see a "breakthrough" in Salisbury as being key to unlocking the apartheid question, perhaps. At a time when so much else was not going George's way, he really started taking in interest in Rhodesia and made sure that Dick knew he had Foggy Bottom's full support..."
- Former White House Chief of Staff Dick Cheney
- Lord David Owen, former British Foreign Secretary, "Lancaster House at 25"
"...suffice to say that while Rhodesia wasn't our main priority in 1978 or 1979, with all the other shit flying around in the world, it was one area where Dick Scranton down at the UN really had an opportunity to put forth some muscular American leadership. There was some controversy here at home in the black community - not that too many people in the black community were keeping close tabs on the inner-workings of Rhodesian African nationalist politics, I'm talking academic types, radicals, that sort of thing - about us getting in behind leaders who were willing to negotiate and work with the Smith regime, but it was time to forge ahead. George [Bush] even saw what we did in Rhodesia as a potential blueprint in South Africa, as a way to maybe transition to a more racially sensitive regime. Of course, the ANC was way more red, if you know what I mean, than Muzorewa's group in Rhodesia, to put it mildly, and the policy of trying to gently nudge Pretoria continued even though George really did see a "breakthrough" in Salisbury as being key to unlocking the apartheid question, perhaps. At a time when so much else was not going George's way, he really started taking in interest in Rhodesia and made sure that Dick knew he had Foggy Bottom's full support..."
- Former White House Chief of Staff Dick Cheney
Operation Big Stick
"...Operation Big Stick was the operational codename of the US military intervention in Panama, named for the saying attributed to President Theodore Roosevelt "speak softly and carry a big stick," and the President responsible for the building of the Panama Canal. A US response to the Panamanian seizure of the Canal Zone was authorized on January 17th, 1978 by President Gerald R. Ford and announced in a primetime television address on January 18th, in which he announced that the United States would immediately "defend its treaty-held territory and assets and respond to violence with force and energy to pursue peace in our hemisphere." The logistical deployment of US forces to Panama was the trigger of the Panama War..."
- Wikipedia entry "Operation Big Stick"
"...while a lot of physical military assets in Panama were not being used, they were still there, the only question being one of logistics. We had never had to resupply Fort Clayton while it was being overrun by enemy units, we'd never had to land planes at Howard with enemy anti-aircraft aimed at approaching flights. The first move would be naval - the immediate deployment of Enterprise in the West Pacific to the Gulf of Panama along with its carrier strike force and the Forrestal, the closest carrier, which was at Roosevelt Roads during the initial attack, which would be moved to the Atlantic entrance. The initial plan was an air campaign, destroying Panama Defense Forces installations throughout the country, followed by aerial insertions of American forces at Howard and Fort Clayton due to proximity to Panama City. We called up two divisions, including the 101st Airborne, which had it's "hot" company ready to go the morning of the 17th and was in Guantanamo that night ready to deploy. We started catching Cuban flights to Nicaragua, to western Panama; something was up. Things were going to get hot, and fast. The 101st's Division Ready Force hit Howard AFB on the 19th once we had Enterprise in place, with support overhead from Navy Tomcats. I don't think you've seen flak like that coming up from a landing site since World War Two, it was just chatter chatter chatter. We didn't want to leave them exposed in the air, and they'd already flown the long way around over Colombia..."
- Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1997 Interview
"...the experiences of Vietnam really colored our response, of course. That we'd been attacked by a foreign state muted any kind of antiwar sentiment, and there was definitely a rally-around-the-flag effect. That the 101st took four days to secure Howard was an ominous sign, as was the casualties sustained. Thankfully, the Navy had air supremacy over Panama within a matter of hours on the 19th and 20th, and I know President Ford thought it grimly ironic that he was "celebrating" the one-year anniversary of his inauguration with an invasion of Panama. The initial push of Big Stick at least helped relieve those besieged at Howard and we next started to draw up plans to put substantial boots on the ground across the country..."
- General David C. Jones, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"...we formed two "groups" - Task Force Roosevelt, and Task Force Hay, named for Teddy Roosevelt and his Secretary of State John Hay, [1] of course. We'd have one to each side of Panama, a full occupation, while we re-secured the Canal Zone. We had an agreement in place by late on the 21st to use air bases in Colombia as a forward operating position into Panama, coming in low over the Darien Gap to deploy the rest of the 101st east of Panama City, and on the 22nd it was Honduras that agreed to let us stage out of there. On the 23rd, the war went even hotter, when a Cuban civilian plane that was nonetheless carrying irregulars into the city of David in western Panama was shot down by a Tomcat in Costa Rican airspace; suddenly, the Cuban military was mobilizing too, right on the edge of Guantanamo Bay. The decision by Colombia to host US troops on its soil was not popular on the Colombian street, and it was about to become an issue in that year's Presidential election there; FARC and ELN started escalating attacks in late January in response, trickling out of their jungles, even attacking some US servicemen. It wasn't popular in Honduras either; all across Central America, it suddenly seemed like the region was catching fire at once..."
- Former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft
[1] As readers of my Cinco de Mayo timeline know by now, John Hay pops up everywhere in my writings
- Wikipedia entry "Operation Big Stick"
"...while a lot of physical military assets in Panama were not being used, they were still there, the only question being one of logistics. We had never had to resupply Fort Clayton while it was being overrun by enemy units, we'd never had to land planes at Howard with enemy anti-aircraft aimed at approaching flights. The first move would be naval - the immediate deployment of Enterprise in the West Pacific to the Gulf of Panama along with its carrier strike force and the Forrestal, the closest carrier, which was at Roosevelt Roads during the initial attack, which would be moved to the Atlantic entrance. The initial plan was an air campaign, destroying Panama Defense Forces installations throughout the country, followed by aerial insertions of American forces at Howard and Fort Clayton due to proximity to Panama City. We called up two divisions, including the 101st Airborne, which had it's "hot" company ready to go the morning of the 17th and was in Guantanamo that night ready to deploy. We started catching Cuban flights to Nicaragua, to western Panama; something was up. Things were going to get hot, and fast. The 101st's Division Ready Force hit Howard AFB on the 19th once we had Enterprise in place, with support overhead from Navy Tomcats. I don't think you've seen flak like that coming up from a landing site since World War Two, it was just chatter chatter chatter. We didn't want to leave them exposed in the air, and they'd already flown the long way around over Colombia..."
- Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1997 Interview
"...the experiences of Vietnam really colored our response, of course. That we'd been attacked by a foreign state muted any kind of antiwar sentiment, and there was definitely a rally-around-the-flag effect. That the 101st took four days to secure Howard was an ominous sign, as was the casualties sustained. Thankfully, the Navy had air supremacy over Panama within a matter of hours on the 19th and 20th, and I know President Ford thought it grimly ironic that he was "celebrating" the one-year anniversary of his inauguration with an invasion of Panama. The initial push of Big Stick at least helped relieve those besieged at Howard and we next started to draw up plans to put substantial boots on the ground across the country..."
- General David C. Jones, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"...we formed two "groups" - Task Force Roosevelt, and Task Force Hay, named for Teddy Roosevelt and his Secretary of State John Hay, [1] of course. We'd have one to each side of Panama, a full occupation, while we re-secured the Canal Zone. We had an agreement in place by late on the 21st to use air bases in Colombia as a forward operating position into Panama, coming in low over the Darien Gap to deploy the rest of the 101st east of Panama City, and on the 22nd it was Honduras that agreed to let us stage out of there. On the 23rd, the war went even hotter, when a Cuban civilian plane that was nonetheless carrying irregulars into the city of David in western Panama was shot down by a Tomcat in Costa Rican airspace; suddenly, the Cuban military was mobilizing too, right on the edge of Guantanamo Bay. The decision by Colombia to host US troops on its soil was not popular on the Colombian street, and it was about to become an issue in that year's Presidential election there; FARC and ELN started escalating attacks in late January in response, trickling out of their jungles, even attacking some US servicemen. It wasn't popular in Honduras either; all across Central America, it suddenly seemed like the region was catching fire at once..."
- Former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft
[1] As readers of my Cinco de Mayo timeline know by now, John Hay pops up everywhere in my writings
So Reagan will Reagan, but not be able to Reagan?
So there is still a good chance that Reagan will still Reagan.?
Pity about Bush not being President. But sec of state is still a good playground for him.
Vice President Bob Dole pops a viagra and cries into his Pepsi out of sadness that your mind immediately jumps to Reagan
This will lead to the rise of a domestic issues-based Democrat by the time of the election I suspect
Perhaps! So for posterity your prediction is a foreign issues based 78 midterms and a domestic focused 1980?
People care mainly about issues at home first and foremost unless there is immediate trouble. While the Panama issue may be a focal point, it wouldn't be long before questions raised on American presence there and growing wariness of American neoimperialism. Like, even back then, I imagine this would be like "wait, what?"
And yeah. I mean, struggling economy, the troubles of the 70s and so on. A focus for growth and development in the 80s will be key, especially as new technologies develop and the administration influencing the new modern cultural growths and vice versa
To expound on an answer I gave @Darth_Kiryan - in my other TL, Cinco de Mayo (currently twenty years of content and 450 threadmarked entries deep! Check it out if you're enjoying Bicentennial Man) /end shameless plug, I have a loose rule of not elevating any real-life world leader to office wherever possible. This is easier said than done with royals than elected officials, of course. But the goal here is to try to avoid not only any OTL American President from coming to office, but to perhaps even see if I can avoid any OTL political ticket - both in the top and ticketmate positions - from manifesting, though this will not entirely be the case in 1980, as @Darth_Kiryan alluded to. This rule applies to foreign countries as well - there's a reason why we've now twice seen interview snippets with a "Former Prime Minister Denis Healey," for instance. This isn't a hard and fast thing, of course, and there are some leaders who are very hard to butterfly away (for instance, getting rid of Mitterand is not something I'm sure how to finesse).
What I can say is this - neither George Bush nor his son are going to be President; Bill Clinton's career is not going to take the same path, and Hillary isn't going to see her own star rise as his wing-woman; and suffice to say that the circumstances that vaulted Barack Obama from Illinois state senator to the White House in 4 years are so difficult to replicate that the tiniest of butterflies would whisk them away. And I don't think one can understand Trump as anything other than a reaction to the Bush and then Obama Presidencies (and the Clinton 90s for that matter).
Out of all the aforementioned OTL Presidents, though, Donald is going to actually play a bit of a role in this TL - just not that of President, and probably not in the elected office you expect.
What I can say is this - neither George Bush nor his son are going to be President; Bill Clinton's career is not going to take the same path, and Hillary isn't going to see her own star rise as his wing-woman; and suffice to say that the circumstances that vaulted Barack Obama from Illinois state senator to the White House in 4 years are so difficult to replicate that the tiniest of butterflies would whisk them away. And I don't think one can understand Trump as anything other than a reaction to the Bush and then Obama Presidencies (and the Clinton 90s for that matter).
Out of all the aforementioned OTL Presidents, though, Donald is going to actually play a bit of a role in this TL - just not that of President, and probably not in the elected office you expect.
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I mostly agree, except for if the conflict expands into one with Cuba and other Latin American countries. Also given the Cold War atmosphere, its possible that since its a communist backed attack on American troops on American soil that it could lead to a push to be more aggressive against communism.
Torrijos wasn't really a Communist though; he was more just a strongman populist with amorphous political views, his main priority being A) keeping people satisfied with various nationalist and popular bromides/policies (such as land reform, agitation over the Canal, etc) so that he could B) enrich himself and his cronies. Noriega came out of Torrijos' orbit after all and Manuel was nobody's idea of a Red
Nailed it!
Oh they are. Torrijos just isn't an ideological Marxist-Leninist bent on world revolution; he's much more of a soft Bolivarian at this point, but pragmatic enough to work with Castro and other Latin American anti-American forces to get what he wants
Mitterand can die of cancer, as he almost did before remission, if you want him off the stage .
.