>Rip;
>
>>I was a little kid when all that went down and really am not aware of the details but wasn't it the case that he was directly invovled in trafficing drugs into the US?
>
>Yes, with the help and knowledge of the CIA.
>Take a look at this -
>http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/Panama_CIAHits.html
>
>>In that case he violated our laws by selling illegal drugs to our citizens thus giving us the right to arrest him under our laws and under our jurisdiction.
>
>He had nothing to do with selling drugs in the U.S., only trafficking them and . The laws of the United States have no jurisdiction outside of our countries limits, without the permission of the nation involved.
>

He was directly invovled in supplying illegal drugs to this country and since he was the head of state we did not have the option of negotiating for his arrest.

>>If he would have only been invovled in selling drugs to his own people I doubt if we would have arrested him. My point is that we don't get involved unless the state or in this case the head of state is directly invovled in activites in the US that are illegal.
>
>Many heads of state of other nations are involved in activities against the United States. We can do nothing to stop it. We have taken action against other nations and leaders of other nations when it is "in our best interest".
>
Well it's not that there is nothing we could do about it but it depends on our current Presidential administration and how they evaluate the impact on our people. And back in the 80's when Reagan was taking the hard line with a lot of other coutries the attitude about what was going in in panama was such that, his administration felt it necessary to arrest him.

The problem is you have taken a case of one head of state and tried to extrapilate what we did there to our being willing to assert our laws on the citizens of another country. Rightly or wrongly we deal with governments, which includes heads of state, with military force when we determine that their actions are detrimental to our country. We do not get invovled in the causual drug use of foreign citizens on foreign soil. It is only when foreign citizens cross the line and start impacting our citizens that we get invovled.