Note: Written in response to Paul Mulshine's column in The Star-Ledger, Newark, New Jersey, titled: "Dubya's dubious Dubai deal," Thursday, February 23, 2006.
Whoever is writing headlines for you ... buy 'em a beer!
I read Farmer's and Moran's columns this morning (Friday)--and others in other newspapers ... mostly you are the only one who is getting it!
There is a chain of security that starts when the cargo (the actual "stuff") is assembled for shipping and continues to when it is received for "use" at its final destination. The port operator has an overarching operational understanding of that path ... with the concurrent understanding of the weak AND strong points. AND it actually is in charge of the security of the cargo at least while it is on the receiving dock from the time the longshoreman unload it from the ship to the time when it is hauled off the dock on a truck or train.
Even a little ol' farm boy from Minnesota like me knows that whoever controls access to the cargo AFTER it has cleared custom and the Coast Guard and BEFORE it is delivered to its final destination has a significant role to play in securing the cargo ... how many drug smuggling movies do I have to watch to "get it?"
So the argument that it doesn't matter who is the port management company is bogus on the face of it. This is not the same as saying that the UAE company is a bad company.
It does point up the fact that after almost 4-1/2 years of a us vs. them, good vs. evil, black and white depiction of the war against terrorism, it is a wee bit of a stretch to rubber stamp this deal without something more than a perfunctory review. If Bush (#43) doesn't understand the inherent difference between Great Britain as an ally vs. UAE as an ally vs. South Korea as an Ally vs. China as an ally ... to say nothing of the different nuances in our hemisphere between Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, etc. ... then Bush ... well, he is as dumb as I think he is. This is not racism or ethnocentrism. It is realism.
And if the Bush Administration doesn't get it ... then their whole anti-terrorism campaign has been rhetorical rather than principled ... and that is what Carolee Adams and other thinking conservatives recognized immediately: this was such a HUGE tear in the weave of the logic that it exposed the falsity of its fabrication.
By the way, does the UAE recognize Israel?
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