Nikki Haley 4-18-2018

18, April 2017                               Nikki Haley

During the “Women in World Summit” on April 6, the US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, was heckled repeatedly by a hostile audience. Sadly, she was attempting to defend the indefensible policies of Donald Trump. As exasperated members of the audience called her out several times, Haley made the absurd comment that “we have to express American values. We are the moral conscience of the world.” Oh really! Haley would do well to read a primer of US misdeeds throughout its short history from the genocide of Native Indians, enslavement of the African Americans, internment of Japanese Americans to its more recent misadventures.

Perhaps, Haley is unaware of the coup orchestrated by the United States and the United Kingdom which overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran, Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh in 1953 to steal their oil which was gifted to the British and subsequently became British Petroleum.

The US then replaced Mosaddegh with a US puppet, the Shah of Iran, who unleashed a reign of terror on dissidents using the dreaded Savak, Iran’s secret police. It is not surprising that the Iranians still harbor fierce resentment towards Britain and the US.

In 1954, The CIA overthrew the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo by another US puppet, Carlos Castillo Armas who continued to exploit poor peasants to enrich the US, United Fruit Company. This move triggered a bitter civil war which has deepened Guatemala’s poverty, civil strife and created a huge refugee crisis.

In 1971, - in the events preceding the birth of Bangladesh, former President Nixon and his Secretary of State Kissinger provided massive military support to the brutal Punjabi military of West Pakistan to crush East Pakistan’s Muslim Bengalis. Over 500,000 perished in the ensuing conflict.

In 1973 the United States overthrew the democratically elected Chilean dictator President Allende, a supporter of Chile’s poor. He was replaced by another US puppet, Augusto Pinochet who killed and “disappeared” tens of thousands.

The US also orchestrated  coups in the Congo, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, and Grenada.

Space does not permit a complete summary of US transgressions but older readers may remember the disastrous wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and more recently the invasions of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. The US continues to send billions of dollars to the Gulf States which have been used to wage war on their neighbors. Saudi bombing on neighboring Yemen has created a huge humanitarian crisis. No, Ms. Haley the US is not the moral authority of the world. It is a waning empire that is guilty of imposing its military power and covert operations (the CIA) to subjugate weaker nations. As the daughter of Sikh parents, Haley would do well to study and follow the basic pillars of Sikhism, “the principles of universal equality, brotherhood and sisterhood.”