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February 23, 2006
More On The Ports Deal Hysteria
James K. Glassman has an excellent article up over at TCS (hat tip to Jonah). Glassman points out the interesting fact that Dubai Ports World is merely purchasing a British company, Pacific & Oriental Steam Company, that dates back to the 1830's.
DP World is a firm based in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, next to Saudi Arabia and just across the Persian Gulf from Iran. It is a company that knows this business well, currently running what The Guardian, the British newspaper, calls "one of the most efficient port organizations in the world," including deepwater facilities in Turkey, Hong Kong, three ports in mainland China, Australia, Germany, the Dominician Republic, Venezuela and South Korea. "Its port operations are breathtakingly fast and efficient." Meanwhile, Dubai itself is building a freeport hub, "so vast that approaching a fifth of the world's cranes are now to be found at work there."
As far as the security concerns of having an Arab company run some of our port operations, Glassman points out the obvious: Britain itself has its share of Islamic terrorists. And even though a couple of the 9/11 terrorists came from UAE, we shouldn't forget that another modern, democratic, Western country--Germany--played host to 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta's cell. Glassman:
The UAE has been a staunch ally in the war on terror, training security forces in Iraq and helping to cut off the flow of money to al Qaeda.Isn't this precisely what the United States preaches? Don't we want places like Dubai to fight terror and to grow, to invest, to buy, to trade, to adopt Western commercial practices, to expose themselves to the rest of the world and thus become tolerant and moderate?
Instead, congressional leaders are trying to kill the deal, which is set to go into effect next week. Why? "Outsourcing the operations of our largest ports to a country with a dubious record on terrorism is a homeland security and commerce accident waiting to happen," says Schumer.This is rank racist nonsense. Schumer knows very well that responsibility for port security in the United States lies not with DP World or any other operator, but instead with the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Customs.
Emphases mine. Glassman goes on to quote Theodore Price, who works for a company that provides terminal-operating software: "If you are worried about a bomb in a box going off in New York, you need to worry about who loads the container overseas rather than the terminal operator who unloads it in the U.S." Exactly. What sense does it make to imagine a terrorist group smuggling a nuke into the country, transporting it to a port, eluding the US Customs and Coast Guard and then using a corrupt DP World contact to plant the bomb in an offloaded shipping container?
If there are substantive (that means reality-based) arguments to be made about why DP World shouldn't get this contract, I want to hear them. But spare me the emotion-based hysterics--they're just as bogus coming from the Right as from the Left.
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Comments
you are right - this is strictly a business deal with a company that apparently puts business first and is serious and efficient. In a rational world there would be no complaint except maybe the nagging feeling that the USA is being sold off lock stock and barrel like a pathetic fire sale - but that has nothing to do with the Dubai company itself. The sad irony of this whole hysteria is that it is a reflection of the absolute success of the administration's constant fear mongering and terrorist baiting that helped it win the last election. They have convinced the public that it is unpatriotic and down right insane to look at anything arab without deep suspicion and distrust. They have been caught in their own hate inspired trap. And their failure to see it coming - the so called political tone deafness - is really a reflection of the total distain they hold for the rest of us dupes.
Posted by: jake at February 25, 2006 07:11 PM
I don't think it's quite accurate to cite the admistration's "fear mongoring". Remember the World Trade Center?
Posted by: Jeff at February 28, 2006 12:35 AM
