Adm. Dennis
"Horatio" Hastert, Cmdr. Richard "John Paul Jones"
Durbin and Seaman Recruit Rahm "Billy Budd" Emanuel
are among lawmakers execrating against the Bush administration's
decision not to boot London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam
Navigation Co. out of American ports because Dubai Ports World
has purchased the company.
Unfortunately,
the explanation of the House speaker, the senior Illinois senator
and the North Side congressman respectively for why this deal
should be sidetracked is, to be charitable, airy. It amounts to
"because Ports World is owned by an Arab country." Leaving
the rest of us to fill in the blanks with specious bigotry, such
as, "Arabs can't be trusted."
The politically
consumed Emanuel also cackled to The Wall Street Journal:
"[The Bush administration's] credibility on national security
is not the ace that they thought it was." As if Emanuel's
credibility on security is superior. My turn to cackle.
Has any public-policy
decision ever been the subject of such instant, ignorant and demagogic
response? Red-hot opinions flowed well before basic information
on how ports are operated and secured was gathered. Days later,
even after most port and security experts said the deal poses
little or no security risk (security remains the government's
job), critics still haven't explained how it would give terrorists
any greater opportunity for smuggling themselves or weapons into
America.
What seems
to bother some critics is that it's "another administration
PR blunder." Not that the deal is necessarily bad, but that
it solidifies the perception that President Bush is uncooperative,
insulated, politically "tone deaf" and the rest of that
incidental garbage. Yes, it is a PR blunder in that the administration
again underestimated the wild-eyed reaction from a political establishment
increasingly populated by modern Know-Nothings. Or from the blogasylum
wards where loonies suspect the deal is something more "nefarious
and clandestine" than meets the eye.
If managing
American stevedores in American ports by an Arab company is such
a big threat, maybe Hastert, Durbin and Emanuel (HD&E) should
open congressional hearings on the security risks of the Essex
House hotel and the Helmsley building in New York, which are owned
by Dubai-controlled companies. If Dubai is not to be trusted because
it seeks neutrality in world affairs by dealing with both sides,
then maybe HD&E will want to hold hearings on our relationship
with Switzerland and Britain (regarding banks in its Cayman Islands).
If Dubai's ports are such a security risk, then HD&E should
look into why the U.S. Navy's most frequently visited foreign
port-of-call is ... Dubai.
A measure
of how idiotic the attacks on this deal have become is the lashing
that the Washington Post, always glad to jump on the
Bush administration, applied to the deal's critics in an editorial,
"Port security humbug." If promoting democracy in the
Middle East is a basic foreign policy goal then, it asked, "What
better way to do so than by encouraging Arab companies to invest
in the United States? Clearly, Congress doesn't understand that
basic principle, since its members prefer instead to spread prejudice
and misinformation."
By now, HD&E
et al ought to be humiliated by the facts. The United Arab Emirates,
which includes Dubai, is a close ally, providing us with valuable
intelligence and cooperation in the war on terror. Voiding the
deal would make America a hypocrite on free trade and provide
damaging ammunition for Al Qaeda. The deal conforms with the demands
of administration critics that we should rely more on foreign
policy than force in our fight against terrorism.
And this:
When so many in Congress are fulminating over the "unitary
executive" and the administration's alleged overstepping
into congressional prerogatives on security matters, here's a
blatant example of Congress' own overstepping its authority into
purely executive matters. Some lawmakers propose voiding a policy
that was set by the executive branch in full accordance with the
law.
If congressfolk
merely had read the papers, they would have known that Dubai Ports
World, along with a Singapore company, was in the hunt for P&O.
They didn't need big brother in the White House to tell them,
so they have no cause to be acting like they were denied information
that everyone else had. Maybe someone should open hearings into
why so many congressmen are so stupid.
