Manuel Noriega was the dictator whose downfall inspired America to sow chaos in Iraq

The passing of Noriega is a reminder of a time when the toppling a foreign leader actually had the desired results

US soldiers man their security position outside the Vatican embassy in Panama City where Panamanian General Manuel Noriega sought asylum during Operation Just Cause, on December 25, 1989. (Getty)

So we must bid our final farewells to Manuel Noriega, arguably the most useful bad guy the United States ever had. Folks at the Pentagon and CIA headquarters might want to pause for a few moments to give him thanks. Noriega, who died several weeks after undergoing brain surgery in Panama City at the age of 83, made invading foreign countries respectable.

Actually he proved himself handy long before George Bush Sr sent an overwhelming force into Panama to remove him from power. For years, Washington tolerated his brutal bestriding of his tiny but strategically vital land because his earlier diligence as a secret informant, delivering nuggets on Cuba and other left-wing doings in Central America, had been so useful to them.

Then came Christmas 1989. Troops loyal to Noriega had killed an American GI and Bush – his poll numbers flagging – seized his chance. American helicopters clattered in – the biggest US military invasion at the time since Vietnam – and that was that. The US completed its mission with 23 casualties; Panama’s death toll – soldiers and civilians – naturally was much higher.

Most fondly remembered is the siege US troops laid to the Vatican embassy after it emerged that Noriega had slipped inside to escape capture. US commanders settled on a heavy metal assault, blasting rock music from loud speakers mounted on humvees circling the compound. For three days, the entire structure trembled under a relentless bombardment of decibels.

It was a scene worthy of M*A*S*H, the long-running TV satire about the absurdities of warfare as experienced by servicemen in the Korean conflict. Dr Strangelove and Catch-22 were also of the genre. The wittily curated playlist included Van Halen’s “Panama”, U2’s “All I Want Is You”, and Bruce Cockburn’s “If I Had A Rocket Launcher”. What fun they were all having.

Television, as it happens, is not done satirising war. New on Netflix this week is War Machine, an alternatively mischievous and disturbingly dark examination of the foolishness of a different conflict that, lest we forget, is still going on. At 16 years, the Afghan war has already become America’s longest in history that so far has cost it $800bn and more than 2,000 lives.

The year is 2010 and Brad Pitt plays a fictional commander of US forces in Afghanistan named Gen Glen McMahon, also known as Big Glen or the Glenimal. Except it’s really Gen Stan McChrystal. The film, indeed, is spun from a magazine article written by the late Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings – it was later to become his book, The Operators – that reported McChrystal bad-talking his civilian superiors, including then President Barack Obama, which, among other sins, led to his being relieved of his duties in Afghanistan.

With cameos by Sir Ben Kingsley – as ex-President Hamid Karzai – and Tilda Swinton, the film asks several important questions. Can the counter-insurgency against the Taliban ever be won? If it does come, what will victory look like? And, more broadly, should we ever march into other people’s sovereign nations, remove their leaders or seek otherwise to impose our notions of democracy, peace and prosperity and think that good will come of it?

If you conclude no, it won’t, then you might want to ponder for a second the very particular legacy of Noriega. The day he was dragged yelling out of his country to Florida, jailed and tried for his crimes was the day things started to go better for his country. Panama, indeed, has never looked back. Thus, you begin to see how the neocons in Washington – and George Sr’s son, George W – got to thinking shock, awe and toppling all those years later when Saddam Hussein and the Taliban were the new enemies. But Iraq was not Panama and nor was Afghanistan.

The Iraq war, especially, has surfaced as a new flashpoint in Britain’s election, with Jeremy Corbyn attracting spitting indignation from the Tory right for connecting the dots between policies of invasion and intervention with an elevated risk of terror attacks on domestic soil. “Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services,” the Labour leader dared to suggest, “have pointed out the connections between wars that we have been involved in, or supported, or fought, in other countries and terrorism here at home.”

And what to do about Afghanistan is set to burst back into the headlines in the US also. Pentagon planners and military commanders on the ground are right now pressing the White House to approve a “mini-surge” to help end what they openly acknowledge is a stalemate in the anti-insurgency struggle, with the Taliban holding its military ground and showing little interest in resuming talks for an eventual political settlement with the leadership in Kabul. Specifically, they want President Donald Trump to agree to deploy an additional 5,000 soldiers. Relative to the 100,000 who used to be in Afghanistan that may seem like small fry. But it would nonetheless represent a 60 per cent increase on the numbers of US troops remaining there now.

It would also mean a halt – even a reversal – of the policy of finally winding down the military engagement in Afghanistan set in motion by Barack Obama. If you have seen and enjoyed War Machine that will probably leave you in a state of some despair. What does the Pentagon see as the point of ratcheting up the Afghan effort all over again? Is it for the good of the Afghan people really? Or for the good of today’s Big Glen who can’t stand the idea of not winning.

Ms Swinton plays a German parliamentarian who confronts Gen Glen at a town hall meeting during a visit he pays to Berlin. “I do not question the goodness of your intention,” she attempts. “I believe you are a good man. I question your belief in the power of your ideas.” The big American, you won’t be surprised to hear, has no clue how to answer.