Twenty-eight years ago, as the Iron Curtain crumbled and liberal intellectuals trumpeted the end of history, a strike force of some thirty thousand American soldiers invaded the small Central American nation of Panama.

They arrived just before Christmas. Before they left in mid-January, as many as 3,500 Panamanians were dead, the capital city was so demolished that locals compared one neighborhood to Hiroshima, and onetime CIA asset Manuel Noriega, the country’s dictator, was in American custody, about to stand trial for drug trafficking.

Noriega spent the rest of his life as an inmate, first in the United States, then in France, and finally in Panama, where he died on Monday. Juan Carlos Varela, Panama’s current president, responded by saying that with Noriega’s death a chapter in his country’s turbulent history had come to a close. But for the US security state, the chapter that began with Noriega’s capture remains wide open.