politburo diktat 2.0

Some people of both parties are howling about the port deal with a company based in the United Arab Emirates. In fact, the company is owned by the UAE.

I was not sold on the deal. So, let’s take a look at some of the facts surrounding it.

The UAE will not control security at the port. Security at all ports is handled by the Coast Guard and local authorities. Included in the deal are stipulations that the UAE company must cooperate with those authorities in every way.

The fact that the US sells port space to state-owned companies from potentially-unfriendly nation. A Chinese company currently does:

The White House appeared stunned by the uprising, over a transaction that they considered routine — especially since China’s biggest state-owned shipper runs major ports in the United States, as do a host of other foreign companies. Mr. Bush’s aides defended their decision, saying the company, Dubai Ports World, which is owned by the United Arab Emirates, would have no control over security issues.

Some administration officials, refusing to be quoted by name, suggested that there was a whiff of racism in the objections to an Arab owner taking over the terminals. The current operator of the six American terminals, P&O Port, is owned by the British company that Dubai Ports World is acquiring. The ports include those in New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia, as well as New York.

I do not echo the sentiments in the second bolded statement in most cases, but we’ll take a look at it later. Let’s instead return to foreign ownership of ports. Singapore has for a while now (from the same article as above):

That inventory includes APL Limited, which is controlled by the government of Singapore, and which operates terminals in Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Globally, 24 of the top 25 ship terminal operators are foreign-based, meaning most of the containers sent to the United States leave terminals around the world that are operated by foreign government or foreign-based companies.

The terrorist threat from Singapore at least equals that from the UAE, which is the wealthiest and most liberal Muslim nation on Earth. Authorities there believe Jemaah Islamyiah has a strong presence, and that group is known to have ties to al-Qaeda and Abu Sayyaf (which kidnapped and later killed Wichita-based missionary Martin Burnham.) Yet, we sold APL Limited port space in four American cities. Perhaps, then, in both cases, the reason the deals were approved is that there were no reasons not to approve of them. British companies own port space, and they have a terrorist sympathizer (George Galloway) elected to Parliament. Places in Canada are considering allowing issues to be decided under sharia law — you know, the one where women can’t hold a job or drive a car. Are we going to cut them off too?

Part of the opposition, of course, comes purely from politics. Do you seriously believe that, given the current makeup and recent actions of the Democratic Party coupled with the fact that it’s a mid-term election year, that any action President Bush makes is going to be met with approval? Me either. Many of these same Democrats — who will howl about racial profiling at airports — now oppose this port sale because it is Arabs doing the buying. Or, rather, because it’s President Bush perceived as doing the selling.

One of the 9/11 hijackers was born in the UAE. That doesn’t mean that the UAE is a general security risk, as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA, who once also implicitly claimed that Chief Justice John Roberts would vote to ban condoms) dishonestly claims:

California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer said “It’s ridiculous to say you’re taking secret steps to make sure that it’s okay for a nation that has ties to 9/11 to take over part of our port operations.”

But to call the United Arab Emirates a country “tied to 9/11″ by virtue of the fact that one of the hijackers was born there and others transited through it is akin to attaching the same label to Britain (where shoe-bomber Richard Reid was born) or Germany (where a number of the 9/11 conspirators were based for a time). Dubai’s port has a reputation for being one of the best run in the Middle East, says Stephen Flynn, a maritime security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. And Dubai Ports World, which is a relatively new venture launched by the government of Dubai in 1999, has a number of Americans well known in the shipping industry in its senior leadership. It operates port facilities from Australia through China, Korea and Malaysia to India, Germany and Venezuela. (The acquisition of P&O would give them control over container shipping ports in Vancouver, Buenos Aires and a number of locations in Britain, France and a number of Asian countries.) “It’s not exactly a shadow organization for al-Qaeda,” says Flynn. Dubai, in fact, was one of the first Middle Eastern countries to join the U.S. Container Security Initiative, which places U.S. customs agents in overseas ports to begin the screening process from a U.S.-bound cargo’s point of departure.

There are Republicans who do not have clean noses in this regard as well. AJ Strata chronicles these (and again here).

Where President Bush has failed in this case, I think, is in passing information along to the rest of us that might ease the minds of some critics (I say might, because pacifying a modern Democrat when it comes to anything a Republican does is something like trying to pacify a wild, hungry badger with pepper spray — you’re just going to get your eyeballs chewed out). The deal was approved after a routine review. It might have been helpful for that information to have been passed up the chain, as a “heads-up” to something that people might justifiably have questions about, like selling American port space to a company owned by an Arab government. In my eyes, the Administration’s worst offense in this case was tone-deafness. It should have seen something coming that might not, in the absence of facts, look so well when the Aqua-Net crew on cable news get ahold of it.

What we are doing here, as AJ says, is insulting one of the only two reasonable Arab allies the U.S. has. What motivation will the UAE have to continue liberalizations to co-operate with us in the future if what’s going over the American airwaves is the thanks they get for it? The fact of the matter is this: to win the war on terror, we are going to have to find ways to work with peaceful and potentially-friendly Arab governments. Political opportunists, in this case, are undermining that effort.

UPDATE: Dean Esmay compiles a list of facts about the UAE, in case you didn’t know.

UPDATE 2: I give you Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), “Mr. C-SPAN”:

“I think that it’s stark raving mad for this country to decide that we’re going to allow a foreign country to manage our ports,” Dorgan told North Dakota Public Radio. “A number of my colleagues and I will be introducing legislation to try to stop that, and to ask that all the material for the negotiation of that be declassified immediately.”

[…]

“It is nuts to allow a Middle Eastern country through a state-owned company to manage our port facilities,” Dorgan said in a statement. “Second, to cede control to the United Arab Emirates is even more unbelievable.”

The Time piece I linked to earlier says:

Over 80 percent of the terminals in the Port of Los Angeles, for example — the biggest in the U.S. — are run by foreign-owned companies. U.S. ports are owned by state authorities, and the workers who actually offload the ships that dock there are the same unionized Americans who belong to the International Longshoremen’s Association, regardless of which company hires them. Dubai Ports will not “own” the U.S. facilities, but will inherit the P&O’s contracts to run them, with no changes in the dockside personnel or the U.S. government security operations that currently apply to them.

What a clown.

UPDATE 3: Byron Dorgan will be outraged! to learn that the Administration has contracted an Irish firm to protect the national whiskey reserve.

[all emphases mine. inherited from: Newsvine crew, AJ, Say Anything.]

j.d. is pitching in on his favorite blog benefactor’s site while the same is at his vacation dacha. This post also appears at his regular blog, called evolution.