The brouhaha surrounding the Bush administration since it gave the green light to a United Arab Emirates company slated to manage six major U.S. ports has nothing to do with homeland security. Allow me to give this episode its proper name: Islamophobia.
This company -- Dubai Ports World -- is a commercial administrator. It is not a security company, and should the deal go through, it will not be in charge of security at a half-dozen U.S. ports. That responsibility remains tight in the hands of our U.S. Coast Guard and Customs officials. Meanwhile, the same longshoremen and stevedores will be hauling containers. Moreover, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (a multi-agency panel that includes seasoned representatives from the departments of Defense, Treasury and Homeland Security) has vetted this deal and given it its seal of approval.
None of the eager critics of this business transaction can furnish a scintilla of evidence that the Bush administration hasn't done its security due diligence on DP World. And so far, no one has proven that the security-vetting process of the executive branch is flawed. Instead, what we have here is a perfect storm of bipartisan criticism based on a combination of nearsighted protectionism and xenophobic anti-Arab sentiment.
An amusing component of this flare-up is the sudden call to arms of the dovish Democrats. Aren't many of these vocal critics the same folks who opposed the Patriot Act? Isn't this the same posturing chorus that opposed National Security Agency surveillance of al-Qaida phone calls? Didn't these same folks want immediate withdrawal from Iraq? Why the sudden about-face?
The entire case against the Dubai Ports deal is built on nonsense. The United Arab Emirates is an American ally in an unsettled Middle East -- and an important ally at that. It is exactly the kind of Arab country we need in our ongoing, critical mission in the region and the broader war effort. The United Arab Emirates is not unlike our good friend Jordan, and is a whole lot better than Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The Wall Street Journal correctly pointed out this week that "critics also forget, or conveniently ignore, that the UAE government has been among the most helpful Arab countries in the war on terror. It was one of the first countries to join the U.S. container security initiative, which seeks to inspect cargo in foreign ports. The UAE has assisted in training security forces in Iraq, and at home it has worked hard to stem terrorist financing and WMD proliferation. UAE leaders are as much an al-Qaida target as Tony Blair."