Tuesday, February 21, 2006

The United Arab Emirates and Our Security

So globalization has surfaced in the form of Dubai Ports World which is buying the British company (Peninsular and Oriental) which runs many big US ports. DPW has been described as a state-owned (U.A.E.) firm run like a private corporation. From what I've read this private transaction between DPW and P&O would leave Americans and Brits working and managing the ports in question with the American government in charge of security.

More importantly for me, with George Bush's record on fighting terrorism I trust his administration to make the right call here.

But...

Politically this transaction is a loser for whoever supports it. You could explain and reassure till you're blue in the face and it is still going to be used as a political football. As soon as I heard the Democrats climb onto this so-called "security issue" I knew the games had begun. The Dems are aching to look tough on a security issue... any security issue... and since reality is not an important element of their rhetoric this port situation will do just fine. Republicans in Congress have seen the writing on the wall and are following suit.

So stick a fork in it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chris,

I was pretty skeptical of the whole idea to begin with, but after reading the following report from Newsmax, I'm convinced we need to reverse this decision:

"The Bush administration's plan to turn over control of six major U.S. ports to a Dubai company suffered another blow on Monday, when former President Jimmy Carter endorsed the deal.

"'The overall threat to the United States and security, I don't think it's exists,' Carter told CNN's Wolf Blitzer."

Could there be a more ringing endorsement for nixing the deal?

All_I_Can_Stands said...

Chris, while I still think this is a security risk due to Dubai World having access to our security plans; I think there is a lot of fun to be had with the Democrats taking issue with it due to their track record.