On the ports thing

A number of mouth-breathing hangers-on I've encountered in my travels around Left Blogistan, and a small minority of its denizens as well, have attempted to portray opposition to Bush's ill-conceived project to sell the operation of six major U.S. port facilities to a company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of the government of the United Arab Emirates, as a racial issue. To borrow a line from a Monty Python album, "This is, of course, pure bullshit."

There are any number of valid reasons for opposing this sale that have absolutely nothing to do with either the skin pigmentation, the religious affiliation, or the geographic location, of the company in question and its employees. We can start with the fact that, as usual, the Shrubbery is telling one story, and the other players in the game are saying something that looks quite a bit different. Shrubya says this deal has been vetted by Congress. Congress says, in effect, "Huh? First thing I've heard about it!"

Speaking of Shrubya, he assures us that this deal and its potential security implications have been thoroughly studied by his government and that there is no threat. Well pardon me for being skeptical, but isn't this the same preznit and mostly the same government who so blithely ignored eleventy-five different warnings about Osama bin Missin' and his intentions, in the month or so before the Event That Changed Everything^TM? As the preznit himself famously observed, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me--you can't get fooled again."

But the bigger argument about why this ports deal is a Very Bad Idea is that it does represent a gaping hole in our national security protections. It doesn't matter that the Coast Guard and the Customs Service and the Border Patrol are still responsible for inspecting and protecting the port and the cargo in transit to and from there. It doesn't matter that the port proper and its facilities are still owned by the United States or its states or citizens. What matters is that we are letting citizens of a foreign power, working for an agent of that foreign power (or at least for a company that is not headquartered in the United States and subject to all of its laws and procedures) into the loop on port security.

Does anyone reading this honestly think that the operator of a port isn't going to be intimately familiar with the security protocols? The very nature of the operation, to say nothing of the success of those very protocols, depends on precisely that kind of intimate knowledge. I don't care if the operators of the port are Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Chinese, Singaporean, British, French, German, Dutch, Turkish, Egyptian--or from the UAE. I don't like the idea of them having that much knowledge about the ways and means of securing our borders--whether against terrorists or just contraband.

Many, many moons ago, when the Second World War was raging and top-flight scientists were coming over from Europe just a hop, skip, and jump ahead of the Nazis, they found themselves in a perplexing quandary. Because they were enemy aliens, they could not work in defense-related industries or research, despite being among the best and brightest and most highly qualified to do that kind of work. Large numbers of these scientists wound up working on the Manhattan Project, which, as we all know, led to the development of the first nuclear weapons. The only reason they were able to work on that project was because it was considered largely theoretical research and thus not as sensitive as, say, our radar systems or the designs of our newest fighter aircraft.

And even then, anyone who worked on the Manhattan Project was effectively consigned to oblivion for the duration. All their mail was censored, and forwarded through a single post office box. They were instructed not to tell anyone--even their wives and family members--what they were working on or where they were working on it. They lived on an enclosed reservation surrounded by armed guards, and their work, their telephone conversations, and their private lives were closely monitored in an attempt to prevent espionage. Again as we all know, all that security didn't work. The Soviets were being kept informed by at least two different people involved with the project.

Now, do you suppose that the owners of DP World, and their employees in the United States who will run those six ports whose operations they just bought, are going to be subjected to anything even remotely approaching that level of security scrutiny? I surely don't. Not to mention the fact that it's a lot simpler and several orders of magnitude faster to speed classified or sensitive information around the world now than it was in the 1940s. Given the fact that the FBI and Homeland Security seem more concerned about people surfing for porn on library computers or betting on NFL games, let's just say I don't have a great deal of confidence in their ability to catch people (or their interest in doing so) who are selling off our security protocols to the highest bidder.

That's why I'm opposed to this deal. I'd be just as opposed if they were talking about selling out to P&O.

Comments

[Bryan]

Amen.

This is the same problem I have with outsourcing: you are giving away the farm and endangering security and privacy.

I like local businesses. If I get taken I like the ability to have an up close and personal discussion with the owner.

I would have been upset if I had known the ports were operated by a British company, because they are not apt to be concerned or aware of American interests. This is not security.

[Andrea]

I couldn't believe my ears this morning. And then... the president telling us today's version of "just trust me". The government, he assures us, has considered these questions carefully. Terrific... so tell us about those considerations. Nope, can't do it.

My guess is that it won't happen. Dennis Hastert AND Dick Durbin are against it. When was the last time they were on the same side about anything?

[Mark]

What preposterous nonsense.

Perhaps you had better start campaigning to wrestle back control of the management of airports from foreign companies then. Every major US international airport is managed by foreign companies, because efficient commercially viable US operators couldn’t be found. No doubt you and your vacuous kin will also regard that as a major threat to ‘security’.

Tell you what, maybe the rest of the world should expel all US commercial interests and get rid of all those 387 overseas US military bases without which US military activity ion the world would be crippled .. they do after all pose a far greater risk to international security than the commercial management contract for six US OWNED ports pose to US security.

[Michael]

For someone who obviously hasn't bothered to try to understand the situation to tell me my take on it is preposterous is, well, preposterous.

It's not just six ports. It's just the six port terminals that P&O is selling to DP World. Most of the other port terminals are also owned by foreign companies (some Chinese, some Danish, and apparently there was a Singaporean company in the bidding war for the six from P&O; and I'm sure there are others). Most people (myself included) were probably not aware of that fact until very recently, if at all. Now that we are aware, you can bet we're going to be working to change it.

U.S. military bases abroad are in no way comparable to port terminals on our soil, not to mention that even if our bases abroad do employ foreign workers, they are not the ones handling the sensitive information. By the very nature of the operation, the owner/operator of a port terminal must be aware of that port's security plans--and must, in fact, be putting that part that covers his operations together in the first place. That's the whole enchilada, right there. He can't plan to secure his part of the operation without knowing what the other parts are doing, and without knowing the parameters within which he must operate. At that point, we might as well consider our port security plans available for sale to the highest bidder on eBay.

If you don't think that's a huge security risk, well, then I don't know what to say. Except that you're either galactically clueless or so blinded by the opportunity to make a buck that you can't see anything beyond the bottom line.

[upyernoz]

sure, there are valid reasons for opposing the port deal (i'm opposed to it, after all). but it's also pretty clear that some people are opposing the deal because of racism. lots of people are against this deal because they don't want "arabs guarding our ports."

that may not be the reason you're opposed to the deal, but you can't pretend that anti-arab bias isn't entering into this for some people. hell, that's why so many wingnuts are against it

[Michael]

I don't dispute that there are some racists opposed to the deal, or that some people who oppose the deal are doing so partially or primarily for racist reasons. That is, as you say, 'noz, obvious.

What I object to is the tighty righties' insistence that the only reason anyone, and especially anyone on the left, opposes the ports deal is because of racial motives. That is as obviously wrong as the existence of racist motives in some people is obviously correct. The Repukes, however, are only pointing to that part of the equation that demonstrates what they already believe, or what they want the rest of the world to believe--that only racists oppose the port deal.

Of course, they conveniently forget the fact that their own rhetoric of terror from those "eeevul ay-rabs" over the last five and a half years probably has more than a little to do with a lot of the racist sentiments many people are expressing in response to the DP World deal.