UAE Dubai Ports backs away
Posted By RichC on March 10, 2006
Thursday afternoon Dubai Ports World pledged that it would transfer operation of six U.S. port terminals to a U.S. entity settling at least some of the “exuberant” behavior of many Americans and our representatives. President Bush and his administration said this should settle a political firestorm surrounding the deal. Perhaps as my previous post commented, we need to deal with foreign ownership of areas we consider security issues.
Most thinking Americans after this will need re-evaluate how we deal with countries that we consider our allies in partnering with us in the war on terror and allow our military to operate on their soils. Interestingly, the UAE was first to partner, serves more of our Navy ships in the Middle East than any other country and allows the US to fly it unmanned aircraft out of there country. The are far more active in combatting terror than let’s say China? Yet Dubai Ports is not permitted to operate port companies (I’m not saying they should … but they should be treated fairly) but Chinese firms are? Let’s get some consistency with our security concerns if that is really the reason. (see Rep. Duncan Hunter’s suggestion)
I understand the concerns we all have about security, and I think Dubai Ports deserves review, but this issue was way over blown by both parties in congress and the predjudicial attack by many Americans. Congress should be embarrassed in how they reacted; way too strong and way to quick. It smacks of ‘Islamophobia’ or at least anti-Arab predjudice if you ask me. The last I heard is that we would working to ‘win the hearts and minds in the Middle East?’ If we are concerned about security, fine, then lets look at all port companies and related security risks. If we want to be protectionist, then let’s deal with that not disguised as a security issue. Jack Kemp makes my point.
Comments