silversand

Democratic and Republican lawmakers, led by New York’s own Chuck Schumer and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, are opposing a deal in which a Dubai-based shipping company will acquire a British company that administers a number of east coast ports. In a fit of anti-Arab hysteria, the legislators are claiming that we cannot trust a company from the United Arab Emirates to run US ports, claiming that the company, due to its association with an Arab country that “has a spotty record on terrorism” will make the United States less safe.

• Lawmakers are asking why an American company wasn’t chosen for the job. But in this instance, a British company was sold to a Dubai company, there was no opportunity for such a choice.
• They are suggesting that a company managing a bunch of mostly American workers that will not have a role in securing the ports will endanger the ports security. In fact, the US Coast Guard secures and will continue to secure the ports.
• Some lawmakers, like Schumer, are comfortable with British or French companies managing terminals at US ports. Others, like Clifton Park, NY Congressman John Sweeney think that no foreign companies should manage US ports. Both of these positions are self-defeating.
  • Sweeney is up in arms over the transfer of management of the ports from a British company to a company from Dubai, but he has never before complained about foreign companies managing United States ports, though ports across the country are managed by companies based in Britain, Japan, Singapore, Russia, and others.
  • Schumer, meanwhile is in the position of arguing that while other Arab or Muslim-majority countries might be okay, Dubai isn’t. He argues that Dubai has a particularly shaky record on terrorism, pointing to three facts:
    1. Two of the September 11 airplane hijackers were born in UAE.
    2. Some of the money used to fund al Qaeda’s actions on September 11 was laundered through Dubai.
    3. A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist who sold nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea, used Dubai as a transhipment point in transactions involving centrifuge equipment.

    But terrorists come from countries all over the world. Terrorists come from Britain, and the United States. And while the other issues Schumer presents are causes for concern when it comes to the United States security relationship with Dubai, they has little to do with a Dubai-based company managing terminals at US ports. And while Schumer argues that these three points are just the beginning, he refuses to specify any other UAE lapses.

This is a classic example of lazy Senators in action. For years the Senate has underfunded port security. If the Senate cared about terrorists attacking US ports they could have installed X-ray machines at Port Authority, payed for the screening of a greater percentage of packages, or enacted any of a number of recommendations offered by the September 11 commission or a variety of think tanks working on security issues.

But the Senate doesn’t really care. If they did, they would have acted years ago. Instead, they are a bunch of shallow opportunists and bigots, happy to inflame the wrong region of the world at the wrong time by blatantly discriminating against Arabs.

There is no national security risk involved in this sale. I imagine the double temptation of slamming the President and defending national security was too much to resist for Democrats like Schumer. For Republicans, political opportunism comes in to play as well. Sweeney is facing a tough Democratic challenger this fall who has already criticized his stance on national security in the wake of the Dubai revelation.

But come on! When the entire Muslim world is storming storefronts of US-owned businesses and western embassies, do we really need to so vehemently insist that we can’t trust Arabs? Is this some kind of retaliation toward Muslims for the Denmark cartoon riots?

Events like this belie the depth of anti-arab and anti-Muslim sentiments in the United States. The polarization of opinion in the world right now between Muslim and Christian people is startling. American politicians, leading American citizens, are expressing outright mistrust and hate toward the Muslim world, and the feeling seems to be mutual. Where will this lead? Do we even want to contemplate the answer to that question?

Let me join with two of my least favorite politicians, Joe Lieberman and George W. Bush, and say: Back the fuck off and give it a rest, people!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.