From today’s Christian Science Monitor:
“What we’re seeing is a very unfortunate knee-jerk reaction in terms of the Muslim world,” says Lester Lave, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, noting the United Arab Emirates is a key US ally in the Muslim world. “If you treat your strong allies this way – this is like a poke in the eye – then what in the world should people who are not our strong allies expect from us?” …
P&O has no responsibility for security. “We have our own police force, harbor patrol, customs officers, and Coast Guard,” says Chris Bonura, spokesman for the Port of New Orleans. “That won’t change no matter who is operating the terminal.”
P&O is not commenting on the political uproar over the deal. But a source within the company worries that the media and politicians are misrepresenting the arrangements. Other who work within the port communities agree. They note that P&O will not be “managing” the ports, as many news organizations have reported. Instead, the company is one of many that leases terminals at the port.
“I’ve never quite seen a story so distorted so quickly,” says Esther de Ipolyi, a public-relations executive who works with the port of Houston. “It’s like I go to an apartment building that has 50 apartments, and I rent an apartment. This does not mean I took over the management of the whole building.”
Security is a top priority at the ports, but there’s concern the Bush administration has not provided enough funds to properly pay for it. Earlier this month, the president of the American Association of Port Authorities complained that the $708 million allotted for maritime security over the past four years amounted to only one-fifth of what the port authorities had identified as needed to properly secure the ports.
So again. Port security in general: big problem in desperate need of serious attention. This particular deal: apparently not terribly worrisome to people who actually understand how ports are operated. The most negative comment I’ve seen about this deal from someone who’s actually involved in port operations is from the CEO of the Port of New Orleans, who is quoted in the CSM article as saying that he “didn’t ‘feel real warm and fuzzy about it.'” Not exactly a red-alert.
I’m no port expert, and I’m happy to be educated by folks who know more about this than I do. But based on what’s been reported so far by what I hope are reasonably unbiased sources – the NY Times and the Christian Science Monitor – it’s still looking to me as though, with respect to this particular deal, Bush is more in the right (no pun intended) than the bipartisan group of opportunists politicians that have jumped down his throat.
UPDATE: From Reuters:
The UAE, and especially Dubai, is a major trading and business hub in the wealthy Gulf region. It has so far been spared from attacks by Islamist militants who have struck Western interests in other Arab countries….
U.S. warships regularly dock at Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port, which is also managed by DP World, and the emirate became the first Middle Eastern port city in 2004 to sign a U.S. pact aimed at deterring the use of shipping containers for terrorism.
The UAE provides logistical support for some U.S. military operations in the region, including Afghanistan. The Gulf Arab state, an OPEC oil producer, is negotiating a free trade agreement with the United States.
Here’s my bottom line: we must be willing to do business with Arab countries that are more or less on our side – indeed, we should actively seek out opportunities to do so. I don’t know enough about the UAE to know for sure whether they are one of those countries, but I have the general impression that they are, and I haven’t seen much in reliable sources (from which I exclude Daily Kos) suggesting that they’re not. They made some mistakes pre-9/11 (such as recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan), but since then, haven’t they generally been helpful? Someone correct me if I have the wrong impression.
The Dems do not have to be afraid of being called politically incorrect here. The issue with Bush has always been his fear of confronting the âfundamentalâ values of political Islam lest he offend his political Christianist mass base. Recently we have seen it with the Muhammadoon riots and we have seen it again with the UAE port deal.
Many of the commentators in that article mentioned how security was a concern, but could be negotiated in the contract more carefully. Here, for example, from the CSM article:
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Now, do you really trust the Bush admin to follow through with this? I for one do not expect them to do their due dilligence when the profits of a corporation are at stake.
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That said, the arrangement is not quite like renting an apartment in a building (although remember those urban legends around 2002 claiming that terrorists were renting apartments in residential buildings and filling them with explosives?). Yes, DPW is not going to be managing the ports, per se, but they are going to take over operations of particular terminals. Think of terminal A at Logan, DWP would be responsible for signing agreements with Delta (which flies into terminal A), but also staffing — hiring people who do maintenence and load and unload cargo. Security is ostensibly done by TSA in the case of airports and the Coast Guard in the case of ports, as I understand it, but this is actually a small percentage of the people that work in these places. Putting ultimate control of those hiring decisions in the hands of a foreign country (remember, DPW is state-owned) with ties to terrorists (2 9/11 hiijackers were from the UAE, members of the UAE royal family have been to associate with Osama bin Laden, etc, etc) raises red flags. We all know how these hiring decisions are made. Someone knows somebody, or someone has a brother-in-law or a son they need to stick somewhere. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to envision a situation where that can end up compromising national security.
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Anyway, Bush was reelected by fanning the flames of xenophobia and anti-muslim sentiment in the name of national security. If nothing else, I’ll enjoy the schadenfreude now that it’s coming back to bite him in the ass.
Anyway, Bush was reelected by fanning the flames of xenophobia and anti-muslim sentiment in the name of national security. If nothing else, I’ll enjoy the schadenfreude now that it’s coming back to bite him in the ass.
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Amen, brother.
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The main concern is to be sure the contract is sound (it probably isn’t, knowing this incompetant bunch), and also, it really does look like there’s huge conflicts of interest in this sale – ties to the Bushies, etc. However, that’s an ethical and trade matter, not security. So far, I have not heard anything that speaks to that…that’s not to say, however, that there isn’t a security concern in respect to this sale.
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And again, you guys nailed it when you said that port security is already compromised…by our lack of giving a crap.
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First, on a bit of a semantic note, he was not elected in the first place, so he was not reelected, in my book.
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Second, I don’t really think Bush fanned anti-Muslim sentiment as much as he fanned anti-secular sentiment in the name of the advancement of the Republican / corporate / Christian right agenda. And that agenda has a lot in common with the agenda of political Islam.
Where does logic and consistancy ever enter the picture with the Bushies?
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One minute Iran is part of the “Axis of Evil” for its religious government, the next he’s telling us that our Constitution comes from God and don’t you know, he should be everywhere and funded federally.