Reasons to oppose the ports deal

Hugh Fitzgerald presents good reasons for opposing the ports deal. Here is an abridged version of his blog entry at Jihad Watch:

Even if every reviewing committee that examines the Dubai port deal declares that there is “no security threat,” there are nevertheless three considerations.

1) The Administration, and the government generally, no longer can be trusted to know what is best. The warnings before the 9/11 attack were clear; Condoleeza Rice’s attempt to fudge all of that should not be forgotten.

2) People living in New York and Baltimore will be made distinctly uneasy knowing that their ports are controlled by a company whose owners are Muslims from the United Arab Emirates, a collection of statelets—Abu Dhabi and Dubai being the best known—which are full of people who loathe us as Infidels.

3) We now witness the spectacle of Bush using, for the first time, his power to veto, in order to protect the United Arab Emirates—instead of agreeing that Americans are perfectly justified in mistrusting, and wishing to discourage, any Arab control of any sensitive business. We would not dare to sell the running of any airports to, say, an Algerian company, or a Saudi company, or any other Muslim-owned company, would we? Why are the ports different?

This deal has symbolic importance. To Bush, the symbolism is: we have nothing against that fine religion of Islam, and in the “war on terror” which is all we are told, repeatedly and idiotically, we are fighting, the U.A.E. is a “staunch ally.” This attitude, this desire to curry favor with Arabs and Muslims, will always get us in trouble.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 23, 2006 04:45 PM | Send