The Trump administration and its spokespeople have dusted off many sordid relics of America’s past and now colonialism can be added to the Trump “rap sheet.” Not content with calling for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, which would abolish the direct election of U.S. senators, and dabbling in Jim Crow policies with a regressive civil rights policy, the Trump administration nominated as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas San Diego businessman and early Trump supporter Doug Manchester. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Manchester called the independent Commonwealth of the Bahamas a U.S. protectorate. On July 10 of this year, the Bahamas celebrated 44 years of independence.
Manchester sees himself not as an ambassador to an independent nation but as an American “viceroy” lording over a population of nearly 400,000, most of Afro-Caribbean descent. Manchester told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Well certainly, for all intents and purposes, we believe that it [the Bahamas] is a protectorate.” It is not certain who Manchester was including as “we,” but his comments would indicate that he was including Donald Trump, who has had his eye on Bahamas real estate ever since the Atlantis hotel and casino opened on Paradise Island, near Nassau, in 1998.
Trump was an original investor in the Paradise Hotel and Casino, which was owned by Merv Griffin’s Resorts International. The Atlantis complex is now owned by South African hotel tycoon Sol Kerzner and his Kerzner International Limited. Just as the Trump Organization is now planning a major foray into the Macau casino business, long dominated by Stanley Ho, Sheldon Adelson, and Steve Wynn, the latter two Trump political supporters, he is now looking to compete with Kerzner in the Bahamas. Hence, Manchester was likely telling the Senate committee that Trump agreed with him that the Bahamas is a U.S. “protectorate.”
Manchester also told the committee that what the Bahamas needed was more U.S. investment to offset Chinese interest in the country. In “Trump World,” investment means more casinos, golf courses, hotels, and condos on prime beachfront property.
For the Bahamian people, Manchester’s comments are ugly and evoke the “tourism plantation” meme that foreigners, particularly white Americans and Canadians, have bestowed upon the country. Manchester’s comments are reminiscent of those of Ronald Reagan’s nominated ambassador to the Bahamas, Mayer “Chic” Hecht, during his confirmation hearing in the Senate. Hecht, a department store owner, hotelier, and banker, told shocked senators, ”I am sure I will feel at home in the Bahamas. I’ve been involved in gambling in Nevada and I’ve been involved in banking for 25 years . . . Also I understand it is a nice lifestyle. I love golf and they have a lot of nice golf courses and good fishing.” Only Donald Trump and Manchester could have matched Hecht in their blissful ignorance about another country.
Manchester believes that because there are U.S. Coast Guard and Homeland Security personnel in the Bahamas, along with a U.S. Coast Guard base on Great Inagua island, the Bahamas’s second-largest island, these facts make the nation an American protectorate. During his hearing, Manchester appeared totally unaware that U.S. government personnel are present in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British territory, pursuant to the Operation Bahamas and Turks and Caicos (OPBAT) diplomatic agreement penned in the 1980s.
OPBAT’s charter states it “is a combined effort by the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands police and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to intercept loads of cocaine and conduct investigations. OPBAT employs U.S. Coast Guard and Army helicopters assigned to joint interdiction bases in Nassau, George Town, Great Inagua, and elsewhere.” U.S. aircraft and marine vessels must have on board Bahamian or Turks and Caicos counterparts while conducting operations within the respective territories of the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. OPBAT did not cede sovereignty of the Bahamas or Turks and Caicos Islands to the United States, regardless of what “fake history” Manchester wants to believe.
Manchester’s ignorance about the Bahamas erupted in a political controversy in Nassau, the Bahamian capital. Bahamian Foreign Minister Darren Henfield of the conservative Free National Movement government said he was “caught off guard” by Manchester’s comments but considered them to be mere “misstatements.” Former Bahamian Foreign Minister and Senate Opposition Leader Fred Mitchell called Manchester’s remarks “patently offensive” and rejected Henfield’s soft-peddling of them. Mitchell added, “A protectorate is an instrument of colonialism . . . Is this now the intention of the United States?”
Other Trump ambassadors match Manchester in their ignorance about the nations to which they have been appointed. Former GOP Senator Scott Brown, whose attempts to run for re-election from both Massachusetts and New Hampshire proved unsuccessful, is now Trump’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. His greatest accomplishments have been to tweet photos of himself enjoying recreational activities in New Zealand and Samoa. When it comes to stupid, nobody does it better than Trump and his ambassador corps.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2017 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
