I guess it's my turn

(2/26/06)

This week I feel compelled to write about the port controversy involving the United Arab Emirates and whether or not we should allow them the leasing rights to several United States ports. I should be writing about the political shit-storm this has suddenly kicked up when the deal was publicly announced last October. A part of me demands that I speculate the motives of both the Democrats and the Republicans that are out in front protesting this deal. These musings would have led me to the word of the week on the news shows, that word being “islamaphobia” and whether or not it is justified. I could have ranted on for several hundred words on this topic and made you chuckle a few times and maybe, if I was really on the ball, offended some of you.
But I won’t. This is because this issue bores me to death. This issue is so politicized and so irrelevant that it is barely worth mentioning. Here’s a little clue to those of you who are either out of touch, or so politically skewed that you need your facts force-fed to you: The United Arab Emirates, if the deal goes through, will not be in charge of port security. The job of port security is that of the United States Coast Guard and the Homeland Security Agency. Things will go on as they always have, even with the evil Muslims in charge because little will change outside of the upper management. Those individuals working in the ports will largely be the same individuals that DP World, the name of the U.A.E. company, will hire once ownership is transferred.
The DP World brass has also named an American citizen as chief of security for their upcoming purchase and a British individual as the head of operations for their US interests for the immediate future. This, of course, means little to a congress full of suddenly defense-minded libs and back-stabbing Republicans eager to distance themselves from a lame-duck president. Grade-A libs like Joe Biden (D-Del.), Chuck Shumer (D-NY), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) are suddenly defense-minded backers of the war on terror that until last week they were unwilling to admit was taking place. Quoting the great El Rushbo, “these people, until last week, thought that George W. Bush was the most dangerous terrorist in the world.”
Something is amiss in this world when lefties like Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid are shouting for racist laws against the UAE while perennial publicity whore and irrelevant corpse, Jimmy Carter is lining up on the President’s side. Yes, the Great Magnet has thrown us a changeup here, good readers. Let us be reminded that in a post September 11th world the UAE is, outside of Israel, our biggest ally in the Middle East. They’ve put a freeze on terrorist assets, provided us with military assistance, and during this post 9/11 political aid, they’ve become one of the largest investors in the US. The UAE owns hotels and other real estate in New York City, San Francisco, and several other locations within our borders. When they purchase a building in New York do we hear Hillary’s shrill scream warning of the dangerous possibility of arabic custodians or bellhops? I think not.
This entire situation is, as I said, completely irrelevant. Our ports are secure and will be secure as they can be. Nothing is one-hundred percent and it never will be. One thing this entire issue stinks of is bullshit partisan politics. The slimy men and women in Washington are jumping all over the president’s back because they think the American public is comprised of mentally deficient individuals, and to a certain degree they are right, but what is missing is the plain logic of the circumstance. People are not going to be put in to a panic over foreign interesting controlling US ports because, in case no one has been paying attention, foreign interests have been contolling our ports for three hundred years. The Dutch have quietly kept up their history of being the traders of the world and now own the lion’s share of the transport market. Their biggest trading company, Maersk , owns 18 percent of the international shipping market, including several ports in the United States. P&O Ports was not a subject of such xenophobic outcries when it owned those same ports they now want to sell to the UAE.
The problem here is that the left of this country, along with the sniveling GOP backers of the left on this issue are too short-sighted to see value this deal with have with strengthening our relationship with an ally in the Middle East. We need as much street cred as possible over there and botching this deal won’t help in the least. This country gave 100 million dollars to Katrina relief (out of the $126 million of foreign aid that was given to Katrina victims) and yet we are still afraid of them because of their religion. The UAE may be an Islamic monarchy, but they are no the fundamentalist psychotics that rule in Iran or the America-hating Saudis that put up with us because we print money for them, these are the people who pay Tiger Woods $3.5 million to just show up at their golf tournament, the people who are creating islands to look like a world map for private real estate purposes. The folks in the UAE don’t mess around. They want the great taste of Islam, but without the annoying jihad aspect of it.
See what happened, I ended up writing about the UAE port deal when I said I wasn’t, I guess it was my turn to wax philosophic about something that has no real bearing on my life...I might just be a journalist after all.