'Hurricane Dubai' hits U.S. hard
It is remarkable the speed at which political controversies now develop into Category 5 storms. It was less than two weeks ago that there was just a trickle of news about a United Arab Emirates company gaining U.S. approval to purchase the British company that operates six American seaports.
Today it is something that most of us can talk about with a fair degree of sophistication.
Perhaps we can all stand to learn more about the situation before reaching a final conclusion, but the groundswell of visceral distrust of the deal should also tell the administration something about the American mood.
We have been sold fear as the logical reaction to September 11, and so we are naturally afraid. In a world where Osama bin Laden and his kind want to destroy our way of life, there is clearly a lot to be afraid of.
It is therefore quite rational for the American public to fear the worst when some of its key seaboard operations are put in the control of a company owned by one of the three countries in the world that recognized Osama's allies, the Taliban, as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
Indeed, this controversy - this arrangement with Dubai's DP World shipping company - is the perfect candidate for a much closer, more careful examination, and yet it was on a glide path to approval in the Bush administration before it became public. DP World's recent request for a 45-day delay to allow for more review of security issues is most welcome.
Perhaps, it would be easier to understand the security concerns about this deal if it were put on a local scale, rather than a global one. Let's suppose it was just announced that a company from the United Arab Emirates had been granted the contract for operating Hungry Horse Dam.
Do you think anyone downstream would be any less nervous because the actual security for the dam would be handled by a government agency? Of course not. It has nothing to do with being bigoted against Arabs, and everything to do with being prudent and secure.
No doubt, the greatest lesson to come out of all this is that the United States has not given national security much thought in handing out lucrative port contracts to foreign-owned companies. Under the Clinton administration, for instance, several ports came under the management of the Chinese-government-owned China Ocean Shipping Company. Now that the Dubai deal is under the spotlight, we should take the opportunity to re-examine the overall security of ports across the country. After all, as terrorism experts have warned for quite some time, only a fraction of the containers that enter the country are actually inspected.
It is true that the companies that operate the ports are not responsible for security. Those duties fall to local port authorities and federal agencies like the U.S. Coast Guard, but nonetheless the port managers and their employees can circumvent security measures more easily than anyone. Those companies have access to all the security plans in place and control the movement of the very containers that might be used to shuffle nuclear, chemical or biological hazards into our country just as readily as cars or televisions.
It's easy to see political opportunism at play in this controversy, with the usual critics of the Bush administration seizing on the chance to make the president look bad on a national security issue. But President Bush is also being attacked by Republican supporters. This is ultimately not a partisan issue; it is a grassroots issue.
The controversy points to a huge gap in the way the Bush administration handles national security - an aggressive willingness to combat terrorism around the world, but a sluggish reluctance to batten the hatches and the borders here at home.
Another 45 days to examine the Dubai deal will provide an opportunity for careful consideration of whether the United Arab Emirates is a worthy ally, as some claim, or a potential security risk, as most folks seem to think. More importantly, it will stimulate further discussion about port security overall.