It is not often that I approve of foreign policy as perpetrated by the Bush or Reagan administrations. And I view any U.S. support of the Contras against the Nicaraguan government as indefensible.

But as a Panamanian citizen, I applaud the military action that over the holidays unseated Panama's dictator, Manuel Antonio Noriega.

It was not an instance of the United States beating up on a client state to subjugate its people to multinational business interests; Panama was in a very unique situation in which U.S. military intervention was the only hope for regaining freedom.

The evening after the invasion, I went to the Raleigh, N.C. restaurant where I work during breaks, haggard from monitoring the newscasts overnight and worried sick about my grandparents and other relatives still in Panama. The cook, a Nigerian student at North Carolina State University, engaged me in sullen discussion over the invasion.

"What business is it of the United States to violate the sovereignty of another country," he asked, "just because they don't like the leader?"

Like him, many observers fail to realize that the situation in Panama was not as simple as that; the bonds between the United States and Panama go beyond the fact that the United States created Panama in 1903, and that the U.S. dollar is the legal Panamanian currency.

Having grown up with the U.S. presence in the Panama Canal and its surrounding military bases, most Panamanians felt it was up to the United States to oust Noriega.

I resent those who say, "The United States should have let the people of Panama decide their own future," as someone else told me at the N.C. State library the day after Noriega surrendered to U.S. forces. We tried.

When we voted against his candidate in the 1984 elections, he tilted the election toward his candidate, Nicolas Ardito Barletta. In 1985, when Barletta announced plans to investigate the murder of dissident Hugo Spadafora, Noriega quickly forced the president's resignation.

In 1987, a disgruntled former colonel in the Panamanian Defense Forces publicly accused Noriega of corruption, money laundering and masterminding Spadafora's death. The people rose once again in non-violent protest, which Noriega squelched with help from his riot forces, the feared Dobermans.

The opposition's non-violent tactics included the wearing of white, the waving of white flags and the banging of pots and pans; Noriega's response was to order the beatings and arrests of those caught wearing white or beating cookwear.

In effect, Noriega declared war upon anyone in Panama who opposed him, even if it meant smashing up newspaper offices and radio stations, or looting and burning the businesses of opposition leaders.

It then became clear that the only sovereign in Panama was Noriega.

We could not bring him down through democratic means -- as he demonstrated last May, he could easily override the power of the ballot by just ignoring it.

He would not listen to non-violent protests: A man who christens his yachts Macho I, II and III views pacifism as weakness and beats his opponents to a pulp.

The United States, finding it hard to justify further support for the alleged drug trafficker, unleashed a series of economic sanctions that did little to hurt Noriega, but caused nearly irreparable damage to the Panamanian economy.

When Noriega declared martial law during the 1987 protests, his troops patrolled the streets carrying U.S.-made M-16 rifles. When acrid smoke blew into our house downwind from the University of Panama, we knew that it had issued forth from tear gas canisters with "Made in the U.S.A." stamped on them.

Driving past the El Carmen cathedral one day, I did a double-take: the camouflaged U.S. Army-issue water cannons parked in front of the cathedral to discourage rallies, had Smurfs painted on them.

Even if Panamanian citizens had gone against their peaceful nature and taken up arms against Noriega, they never would have been able to depose him -- the United States and Cuba had helped him build an arsenal and a military force that could have become one of the most powerful in the hemisphere had it not been stopped. The United States, which had created Noriega and saddled him upon Panama, thus owed it to Panamanians to depose Noriega.

The just nature of this military expedition, however, should not be interpreted as carte blanche for the Bush administration to continue using military might in Central and South America for the "War on Drugs." The situation in Panama was unique in that a single man had taken the country hostage and was speaking from his own selfish interests as its government --and had risen to that position with the full help of the United States.

Panama has a hard road ahead -- its citizens must establish a credible government and a capable police force that can itself be policed against the corruption that fueled Noriega's armed forces.

Even more importantly, the new government must take steps to lure international investors back into the country and repair some of the damage done by 20 years of PDF corruption, two years of U.S. sanctions and a week of looting.

Panama's liberation was costly, but at least for now, the air we breathe is free.