Pretzel Logic

Hello, Dubai

Well, the debate over the state-owned Dubai Ports World company taking over ownership control of six US ports continues unabated, with a lot of worrying xenophobic overtones. I think there's a lot to question about how this deal came into place--there seems to be a general (and completely characteristic) lack of oversight from the BushCo Dumpling Gang, potential conflicts of interest, etc.--but I'm not quetioning it just because it happens to be owned by Dubai. I'd have the same questions about it in regards to learning that any foreign company had ownership control of our ports--which indeed seems to be the case for a great many of our ports. I'm in agreement with Nora Ephron over at the HuffPo:

Tell the truth, did you have a clue that virtually every port in America had been outsourced?

Did you have the remotest idea - when you first heard that the government of Dubai had been given a contract to run all these American ports - that the contract did not involve security?

Exactly how much time had you spent thinking about Dubai up until this point and do you have a clue where it is exactly?
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Has this whole port issue become the Democrats' equivalent of what the Republicans did with the Terry Schiavo case? Aren't they purposely and disingenuously using a false issue for their political advantage?

Aren't they piling on in order to seem more post-911 than the Bushies themselves?

John Dickey over at Newsweek has some commentary on the city/state of Dubai:

It’s a glitzy tourist Mecca and boom-town extraordinaire now, with spectacular hotels, water parks, indoor snow skiing, the world’s tallest building under construction and vast networks of man-made islands visible from outer space as a palm tree and a map of the world. Built from the sand up purely to facilitate business and pleasure, there really is not and never has been any place quite like it. That’s something to keep in mind as you look at the debate about whether a Dubai company, Dubai Ports World, should be allowed to run six U.S. ports. It also helps explain why DPW has facilitated a political reprieve for President George W. Bush by temporarily postponing the date on which the company will take control of the terminal operations, letting tempers and rhetoric cool.
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If it’s true, as some pundits like to say, that in the 21st century the world is flat, then from Dubai you can see all four corners. The neighboring emirate of Abu Dhabi got oil, but Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum had imagination. As the genius behind the city-state’s development long before he officially inherited Dubai’s top position earlier this year, al-Maktoum has spent the last three decades building up his city’s modern port facilities, its first-rate airport, its superb airline, its dramatic skyline, its reputation as a place where people from all over the world can come to do business with maximum comfort and minimum hassles.
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Dubai has a commercial vision—it is a commercial vision—that fits perfectly into the realities of the 21st century. It’s an open city for an open world. The United States, on the other hand, looks increasingly wary, withdrawn, insecure and ill informed. Jingoism, xenophobia and thinly disguised racism may help win votes, but they won’t make the United States any safer.

In regards to safety, Carl Pope (of the Sierra Club) has a post over at the HuffPo hits the nail squarely on the head, writing about a conversation he had with Gary Hart:

Hart, the co-chair of the U.S. Commission on National Security, said that his commission found that even before 9-11 the failure to inspect shipping containers was the biggest point of vulnerability in U.S. transportation networks. Stephen Flynn, a top port-security expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, has been proclaiming for years that we have a big problem -- but that problem isn't who owns the terminals at the U.S. end.

Every month since the attack on the World Trade Center, thousands of containers bound for American destinations have been loaded onto ships in the ports of Dubai, Karachi, Beirut, Port Said, and even Aden. These ports are vulnerable to infiltration by Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups -- Dubai probably the least so. And when these ships arrive in U.S. ports, only four to five percent of the containers they deliver are subject to any security search at all. The New York Times this morning reported that "There is virtually no standard for how containers are sealed, or for certifying the identities of thousands of drivers who enter and leave the ports to pick them up..."

Yes, Dubai served as a way station for the shipment of nuclear materials by notorious Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan's network, and no, he didn't have to worry about being apprehended there. But loading a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon into a container in Dubai wouldn't require that the terminal at the U.S. end be under Dubai ownership. Only one of the six U.S. ports in question even has a working radiation detector!

Who is worrying about real security problems? Everyone, it seems, except the Department that was created to defend our homeland security. When he was still a Senator, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine tried to pass legislation to tighten security for chemical plants, but the Administration nixed his efforts.
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It's frankly a mystery. When the Sierra Club polled Americans last summer, we found overwhelming public support for major new investments in port security and in chemical and nuclear safeguards. As yet, though, neither politicians nor the media have seemed willing to respond to that hunger for real safety and genuine security.

I've got more on the flip, including an article from the SF Chronic(le) on the history of the Dubai Ports World company, and some quick transcription of debate from this morning's To The Point NPR show with a surprising conservative guest coming out against President Bush...

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And here's some info on DPW from the Chronic(le):

The rapid growth of DP World mirrors the swift expansion of Dubai into a commercial power that is less dependent on its oil wealth, which is modest by Persian Gulf standards. The glittering city-state boasts the Middle East's leading airline, Emirates, and has been snapping up other foreign assets, including the Essex House hotel in New York.

Dubai's leader, Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, known as Sheik Mo, is the driving force behind the city's foreign investments and massive domestic building projects that include man-made islands shaped like palm trees, the world's tallest tower, an underwater hotel and a theme park to dwarf Disneyland.

Strategically located on the Persian Gulf, Dubai emerged in the late 1990s as a major Middle East port. So when the city began its ambitious economic growth campaign, becoming a global port operator made strategic sense. Now the company wants to expand into a new market, the United States, a massive importer of foreign-made goods.
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Industry analysts said DP World is well-known and respected in the global port management industry, which is already dominated by non-U.S. firms and has no direct responsibility for port security.

"They have a sterling reputation," said Peter Shaerf, managing director of AMA Capital Partners LLC, a merchant banking firm that specializes in the maritime and transportation industries. "They have never done anything that would expose them in any way as a security risk. They run first-class ports."

Shaerf noted that while DP World is owned by the United Arab Emirates city-state of Dubai, many of its top executives, including the outgoing [Chief Operating Officer Edward] Bilkey, come from the United States. Other top DP World executives come from Great Britain, India and elsewhere.

Seeking to correct what he called a "complete misconception" by the public and politicians, Bilkey told CNN that while DP World is "a commercial enterprise of the government of Dubai," the government is "not involved in our daily operations. "When we want to make investments, when we want to have a new project, we decide it on commercial terms. And we base it on financially sound operations," he said.

Back to the xenophobic aspects of this deal, here's a bit of the conversation from this morning's To The Point NPR/PRI program, hosted by Warren Olney from KCRW, which included longtime conservative mover and shaker Phyllis Schlafly (who campaigned against ERA in the 70s and was a rock-solid anti-communist in line with Ronald Reagan). (You can listen to the whole program via Real Audio.)

Warren Olney: What about the President's statement that if we treat... first of all, it's my understanding that most of the ports are what are referred to as landlord ports and that foreign companies do run most of the terminals. I forget what percentage it is, but it's very high, in the neighborhood of 75-80%. The President says if we make a distinction with an Arab country that has been very useful in the war on terror--that, again, according to Secretary Rice--then we're sending a terrible message to the Middle East. How do you respond to that?

Phyllis Schlafly: Well, in the first place, we're entitled to make a distinction. England has been our friend since 1814. And other countries may have governments that come and go with their friendliness toward this country, but the standard is that American's should make that decision. And it's not somebody's right to come in and own our ports. And the problem with President Bush is he doesn't have any credibility on the matter of securing our borders. He's allowed, he apparantly believes in open borders, believes in a globalist approach that it's OK for foreigners and other countries to come in and own things. And I notice that Gary Hart got resurrected on television last night to make his comment, and he said that this is the confluence of major terrorism in the age of globalism and we're just going to have to get used to it. But the American people are not willing to accept this notion of open borders, and anybody can come in and enter our country at will or own our property.

Perhaps when President Bush warned against isolationism in his State of the Union speech, he was really talking to the Schlafly wing of the Republican party, not the Democrats as many post-SOTU news articles surmised.

Olney: Well, Miss Schlafly, you find yourself on this issue in the same camp, I gather, as Senator Clinton of New York. What are the consequences of that?

Schlafly: Well, that means that President Bush is really fracturing the Republican party and he should have checked, I think he must be living in some kind of a bubble that he did not realize what a flap that this would create. And the idea that President Bush allowing Hilary Clinton and Senator Schumer to get out on the patriotic national security side of this issue and the side of him is extremely hurtful to all Repbulicans. It's another way, in addition to his failure to secure our borders, that is alienating large numbers of what should be his constituency.

Yeah--cos we know that the Democrats could never be mistaken as patriots.

Olney goes back to Ali Abu Nema [sp?] (who focuses on monitoring the media as it relates to Arab issues) to respond to Schlafly's assertion that he, and others in the media, are smearing good Americans (such as playing the Nazi card) who object to Dubai Ports World taking over operational control of these six ports. He says he's not attempting to smear, only bring out some of the things he's heard in the media, and then continues:

Nema: But, having heard her (Schlafly), I have to say that this is exactly the kind of scaremongering I'm talking about because she's saying that a foreign company is going to take over our ports. That's simply not true. The United States government remains responsible for security at the ports as it was, as it is, and as it will be. What we have is a foreign company that operates the ports that is being transferred in ownership to another foreign country. There's no responsibility for security taking place. The fact that Miss Schlafly has no objection to a foreign-owned company operating the ports as long as it's not an Arab one is exactly what I'm talking about. And there are people claiming that the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, had links to 9-11. Well, Richard Reid the shoe bomber was British, and that doesn't seem to bother Miss Schlafly neither. So I think we have to be very clear that what we see Hilary Clinton and others doing is preying on the preexisting fears and general sort-of readiness to view Arabs as suspicious in a way that we don't treat other people, and using that to make political points.

Rhami Khouri (an editor for Lebanese newspaper Daily Star) joins the discussion

Khouri: There's extreme anger and indignation, and people are taking offense at the way this case is being handled, precisely at a moment when the United States is selling hundreds of billions of dollars of its treasury debt every year to foreign countries, including many Arab countries, when it's promoting free trade, when it is promoting globalization, when already about a quarter of American ports, I think is the right figure, 26-27% of port facilities are already owned by foreign companies. And you have foreign companies owning parts of strategic defense industries, sometimes even indirectly, like Magnavox for instance, which is owned by Philips. So there's just this massive contradiction between the way people in this region see US treating the world and treating the people in the Arab/Islamic region. They really take offense at this. And being a good Greek Orthodox Christian Arab, I am even more offended, because I think the sense is that another double standard that is being perpetrated. And it really is nothing to do with security. Phyllis Schlafly's concerns about security are perfectly legitimate and I think all of us need to be concerned about security. But this is not about security, this is about hysterical political overreaction and a political ploy within the United States by frantic Democrats who are trying to go to the right of President Bush and they finally found an issue they could jump on. But this is going to come back and bite the United States so hard because it's going to tell a lot of people around the world, including Chinese, Arabs, others, who will say, wait a minute, this is how the United States deals with global investment--we don't want anything to do with this.

But Schlafly really wraps herself into a pretzel in trying to hammer her point of objection to this ports deal.

Schlafly: I would like to respond to those who said this is just the free market and it is of course the view of the Bush administration that we should go with the free market. But that is not generally a popular view in this country. And I think they have to recognize that Americans have something to say about these.

What?!?! Miss Conservative herself turning her back on the foundation of the modern Republican party--the free market? Would she suggest that the federal government should take control of port ownership? I bet a few weeks ago, before the discovery of the Dubai Ports World deal, she would have laughed at that notion.

These are just some of the highlights--it was a good discussion throughout, and it ends up with some interesting questions about Arab and Muslim identity (believe it or not, it's a very diverse and large group in the world... but you'd be hard pressed for the vast majority of Americans to understand this when most of the knowledge we get of the Arab world comes from 24).