What a political clusterf**k for the Bush Administration.
There really is no other way to describe the monumental stupidity, insensible decision making, and PR disaster that the sale of port management responsibilities to DP World has become for the the rabbit heads at the White House.
I’d ask what were they thinking but posing such a question assumes that there are at least two working brain cells among officials in the entire executive branch of government. And judging by what we’ve heard in justifying this decision the last few days, I may be giving them more credit than they deserve in the localized distribution of neurons.
No less than 12 agencies and departments signed off on this idiocy including our Homeland Security Department but not, evidently, the people who would have to go to war if this decision blows up in our faces and something catastrophic happens; the Department of Defense:
In a press briefing today, Secretary Rumsfeld revealed that he was not consulted about the decision to transfer operations of six key U.S. ports to the United Arab Emirates, a country with troubling ties to international terrorism.QUESTION: Are you confident that any problems with security — from what you know, are you confident that any problems with security would not be greater with a UAE company running this than an American company?
RUMSFELD: I am reluctant to make judgments based on the minimal amount of information I have because I just heard about this over the weekend.
A small detail of note is that Rummy’s Defense Department is supposed to be part of that Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) that voted “unanimously” to okay the transfer to DPI. Would someone like to explain how the Secretary was not informed or briefed on this decision until this past weekend?
On its surface, there really is little to be upset about with allowing the Dubai based company to handle the management of the ports. DPW has contracts at ports all over the world and has proved itself competent enough. There would be a minimal change in employees at the six ports in question. Ships would still have to be offloaded by the Longshoremen, as patriotic and security conscious bunch as there is in the United States. And as AJ Strata rightly points out, actual security of the ports would still be in the hands of the Coast Guard and the Port Authority.
So what’s the problem? The problem is in the atmospherics of this deal.
The problem is with the tone deaf bureaucrats of CFIUS who okayed this deal in the first place. They may have gotten some DoD flunky to vote for it in Committee but not bothering to brief the Secretary of Defense or the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff about it only contributes to the notion that they are not taking port security very seriously.
The problem is with the incompetence (or arrogance) of the supposedly vaunted White House political operation in treating this deal like a routine transaction when the involvement of a Middle Eastern country whose toleration and support for the Wahhabi brand of Islam was sure to cause trouble on the Hill. Then there’s also the minor matter involving the UAE being a banking Mecca for terrorism. I find it more than a little ironic that monies we’re pouring into the banking system of that country could be used to plan and carry out attacks against our own country.
The problem was in not recognizing that the deal would give your ravenous and out of control enemies on the left and in the press a great big T-Bone steak of an issue to chew on in the immediate aftermath of the Cheney debacle. These are people who were gnawing on your leg while bodies were still floating in the floodwaters of New Orleans. Just what in God’s name were they thinking?
The problem is that given the lukewarm response of our government to the cartoon jihad, the President’s strongest and most vocal supporters would see this deal as one more nod, one more cave-in to Muslim sensibilities rather than the good business deal it almost certainly is. Taking the base for granted in anything is bad politics. In this case, it demonstrates an ineptness that would be troubling if we weren’t getting used to it by now.
Finally, the problem is President Bush. One of the major reasons we went to war in Iraq and have sacrificed so much was based on the idea – a good one – that after 9/11 we couldn’t take the chance that Saddam would make common cause with al Qaeda and supply them with weapons of mass destruction. It wasn’t important how likely that possibility was at the time. The point was that we just couldn’t take the chance.
And now here we are 3 years later and we are taking what I believe is a similar chance that a company owned by a state that has refused to recognize Israel, that acted as a waystation for al Qaeda in the lead-up to 9/11, and despite protestations to the contrary, is run like a Medieval fiefdom with trafficking in white slavery, illegal arms, and drugs some of its more unseemly activities. It is “stable” only as long as Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum – “Sheik Mo” as he is called by his subjects – can keep the lid on the resentments of the hundreds of thousands of foreign workers who live in virtual slavery and who do the scut work that the natives and western contractors don’t feel like doing.
But here is the President yesterday showing that now famous obstinacy that serves him well at times but in this case only makes him look arrogant and disconnected from reality:
President Bush said this afternoon that he would veto any legislation seeking to block the administration’s decision to allow a state-owned company from Dubai to assume control of port terminals in New York and other cities.Mr. Bush’s rare veto threat came as Republican leaders and many of their Democratic counterparts called up today for the port takeover to be put on hold. They demanded that the Bush administration conduct a further investigation of the Dubai company’s acquisition of the British operator of the six American ports.
“After careful review by our government, I believe the transaction ought to go forward,” Mr. Bush told reporters who were traveling with him on Air Force One to Washington, according to news agencies. “I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company. I am trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world, ‘We’ll treat you fairly.” ‘
The President wishes an explanation why a Middle Eastern country should be held to a “different standard” than the Brits? Is he kidding?
How could DPW being in charge of the management of our ports facilitate a terrorist attack on the United States? Do you want to find out? And therein lies the problem for the President. He and the CFIUS could give us assurances from here to doomsday but the fact remains the possibility is there. And if our security is all about not taking chances – which I believe is a sound policy – then this deal is a slap in the face to the men and women who overthrew Saddam Hussein and are working their tails off to make Iraq into something resembling a democracy.
The only way to salvage the situation now is for the White House to agree to hold hearings on the matter, let the politicians grandstand to their heart’s content, and then quietly kill the deal when the hubbub dies down.
Otherwise, the President is going to find himself alone at the end of a very short plank. And Republicans are not going to join him in walking it.
UPDATE
I find it laughable that the left is waving the flag on this issue. If they showed one tenth the outrage at illegal immigration – a problem that poses a security risk 100 times more serious than the ports issue – then they might have some credibility when it comes to talking about “playing politics with our security.” Opinion Journal:
As for the Democrats, we suppose this is a two-fer: They have a rare opportunity to get to the right of the GOP on national security, and they can play to their union, anti-foreign investment base as well. At a news conference in front of New York harbor, Senator Chuck Schumer said allowing the Arab company to manage ports “is a homeland security accident waiting to happen.” Hillary Clinton is also along for this political ride.So the same Democrats who lecture that the war on terror is really a battle for “hearts and minds” now apparently favor bald discrimination against even friendly Arabs investing in the U.S.? Guantanamo must be closed because it’s terrible PR, wiretapping al Qaeda in the U.S. is illegal, and the U.S. needs to withdraw from Iraq, but these Democratic superhawks simply will not allow Arabs to be put in charge of American longshoremen. That’s all sure to play well on al Jazeera.
Why do liberals believe that gimmicky stands on issues like this will prove to people that they are to be taken seriously when it comes to the security of the nation?
Talk about tone deaf….
UPDATE II: BUSH IN THE DARK
AP is reporting that President Bush didn’t know about the ports deal until it had already been approved by the CFIUS:
While Bush has adamantly defended the deal, the White House acknowledged that he did not know about it until recently.“He became aware of it over the last several days,” McClellan said. Asked if Bush did not know about it until it was a done deal, McClellan said, “That’s correct.”
“The president made sure to check with all the Cabinet secretaries that are part of this process, or whose agencies or departments are part of this process,” the spokesman said. “He made sure to check with them — even after this got more attention in the press, to make sure that they were comfortable with the decision that was made.”
“And every one of the Cabinet secretaries expressed that they were comfortable with this transaction being approved,” he said.
Ooookay…How these guys figured that this wouldn’t be a huge todo in the media and the Congress is beyond me. They didn’t even think that it was worth briefing the President before the Committee took a vote to get his input?
Bush seems to me to becoming more disinterested in what’s going on lately. He may have “hit the wall” as marathon runners say in that the constant warring may be contributing to some kind of Presidential burnout. The same holds true for his staff. Would they have made this kind of gigantic miscalculation in Bush’s first term?
I wonder…
UPDATE III
Michelle Malkin on the security angle:
The issue is not whether day-to-day, on-the-ground conditions at the ports would change. They presumably wouldn’t. The issues are whether we should grant the demonstrably unreliable UAE access to sensitive information and management plans about our key U.S ports, which are plenty insecure enough without adding new risks, and whether the decision process was thorough and free from conflicts of interest.
The Journal and the Bush administration make no persuasive case that it was.
Michelle is talking about the WSJ editorial I linked to above that actually supports the deal.
8:15 am
The whole deal is almost Kerryesque in it political tone deafness. Even scarier, Jimmuh’s for it.
8:58 am
Ports of Politics
This whole uproar over ports has some very strange twists and bedfellows to it. We now have Democrats acting like hawks and demanding that this country profile against an Arab nation. Liberal are now endorsing profiling.
Are the Democrats now saying th…
9:53 am
Follow the money. Bush and his pals stand to make a bunch of $$$$, and by God, the American people will NOT stand in the way!
10:26 am
How much money is the UAE company saving us by working the ports? I think the deal is fine; I have family that work in Dubai. They are treated quite well. The UAE, Yemen, and Oman tend to have the policy of do what you want as long as you don’t bother us. Unfortunately, it true there is slavery there. The majority of the traficked women and male “servants” come from India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Phillipines. I think it is absurd when you leave someone in your “own” administration out of the loop. It’s incredibly retarded when you leave your Secretary of Defense out of the discussion especially when the discussion involves national security.
10:30 am
Oh Right….I’m supposed to believe that suddenly George Bush, C. Rice, D. Runsfeld and Chertoff have gone wobbley on terror, and thrown over the security of the American public for $$. Sorry, but I’m not buying it. I trust George Bush to try to protect the citizens of this nation more than any other politician. He has stated that effort to be his number one priority, and there’s NO evidence that he changed his mind about it. We tell the Mulsim world at large that we’re not against all Arabs or Muslims, but then the “freaked out” reaction to this deal, without all the facts being known, points to just the opposite. This deal was vented at the highest levels, and with the Presidents threat to veto any bill Congress may do to disrupt or end this action, shows that Bush really believes in it. Trust him.
10:50 am
I would like to know what rick moran thinks of the article by dick meyer at cbsnews.com.
11:04 am
As I say in the article, there isn’t much wrong with the deal although just because it’s hard to imagine how it could compromise our port security doesn’t mean that there is not a risk.
My beef is in the way it was handled. And judging by this breaking story on Yahoo, the President didn’t even know about the CFIUS deliberations until they were a done deal:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060222/ap_on_go_pr_wh/ports_security
In.Ex.Cusable.
12:31 pm
MO MORE BUSINESS AS USUAL
Let’s take a closer look at a rose-colored Wall Street Journal editorial on the port deal that is garnering favorable reviews from some of my friends on the right. Sayeth the WSJ: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is the latest…
12:40 pm
Bush Was Unaware Of Ports Deal
Well, this report is just going to make the political minefield that the Bush Administration has found itself in regarding the deal that would result in a company from the United Arab Emirates running America’s major seaports.
WASHINGTON —Pres ….
1:51 pm
Bush [hearts] Dubai
The Right Wing Nut House! (Literally.)
2:15 pm
Hard to Port
Big Lizards offers a modest solution to diffuse the problems from both angles, which essentially entails creating a US subsidiary to the Dubai Ports World that would be a wholly American enterprise, so that all the actual management of the ports be h…
2:28 pm
I agree with McCain on this one that more investigation needs to be done. And it looks like the law says more should have been done.
If port services management rises to the level of a national security issue, then maybe the US government just needs to take over.
2:54 pm
Port Security: We Weren’t Wrong To Question, But We’re Satisfied By The Answers
As of yesterday, the port story was proceeding, full steam ahead, as major headline news. Every outlet is scrambling to jump on board, getting their piece of the action. And just like any good reporter knows, scandal (or perception thereof) makes for …
6:36 pm
Some Background to the Port Controversy?
There is more to the port deal than meets the eye. The administration is in the middle of an extensive negotiation that has been ongoing for two years, in conjunction with similar meetings with Bahrain and Oman.y
This probably explains the harsh reacti…
7:28 pm
To those supporting the port deal,
You know that it is the UAE government that owns this company, right? This is my biggest beef with the deal. Other governments should own our debt, our infrastructure or anything that is essential for nation to run. If the British company was owned by the Queen, it would also be a problem. I don’t see how people are okay with a government owning major portions of our infrastructure.
9:34 pm
I believe that if President Bush handles this correctly, the political stupidity of this situation can be overcome. Here we have the President threatening a veto with no knowledge of the events prior to the last 2 to 3 days. Several Republicans say that there has been no detail vetting of the buyer. Rumsfield had no prior knowledge of the sell. Is there anything here that might raise any suspicions? The White House is caught off guard on this sell? Come on, this looks absolutely horrible…
At this point, the President needs to allow a 45 day detailed look at this buyout and allow Congress to report. Hopefully, no major problems are found and the lease goes on as usual.
There is no doubt that this was bungled and should have been handled very early on by the “Rove” team and no problems would have resulted. They were asleep on this and may suffer the consequences.
Again, although I understand the reasoning behind allowing UAE to finalize this deal, it was handled so poorly that it SHOULD fail
PS: This is a repeat from another blog but it still applies…
9:51 pm
Among the initial emotional and predictable responses by the democrats is how they’ve managed to not only change horses in the middle of the stream, but are going a different direction in a renamed river. Clinton, Carter and Gore are all out fanning the Islamic flames on the side of the “Arabs are our friends”, meme. (Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got lots of Arab friends/business associates, just no Islamic Ghouls.) Meanwhile back at the ranch…..
Basically, I feel about the same as Mitz. I do think it would be an interesting, if not hilarious (given certain people’s aversions) turn of events, should Halliburton come riding in to “save the day”.
9:58 pm
(Sorry I hit the wrong button-I wasn’t done) I can’t believe what a political entanglement this is but, what have the PHD packing Economists said about this move?
12:42 am
The Sum Of All Fears
Rescind Mr. President. Faith is a misplaced emotion in the long war on terror, and the assurance that U.S. ports will be secure when they are managed by a firm owned by a government in one of the most volatile parts of the world, is worthless.
1:00 am
Let’s Make A Deal
Several people that I trust, including Mansoor Ijaz, Rich Galen and even General Tommy Franks have now come forward to endorse this deal. The UAE has been our ally in the War on Terror. And let’s face it… We need all the friends we can get right no…
1:24 am
Apparently the Israelis use them.
Everyone uses them .Their COO is an American. It is a HOLDING COMPANY. Most of their top managment is American.
Two of our big west coast firms are owned by the Chinese.
I’m calling B.S.,Rick.
6:28 am
Bacon Break — Heavenly Harbors
image
So, what to think about the whole Dubai/UAE thing?
Rick Moran is flamin’ (at the idiocy of the Bush administration)…
Don Surber says he’s chillin’…
Dafydd is compromisin’…
…and I still haven’t decided yet. So…
8:44 am
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9:27 am
Rick,
DPW’s purchase of P&O was agreed to on February 10th. The sale of P&O began 3 months ago. Had this story become public prior to the purchase, think of the bad publicity against our interests in the Middle East. Say PSA won the bid for P&O, there would be no issue and certainly good relations with UAE. The President had no choice but to stand by this transaction, even if the ultimate result will be the divestiture of the US ports by DPW. It gives a face saving out for DPW and makes it domestic politics rather than US foreign policy. This issue is like Social Security, make a single security case and the complex issue is dead. This is why I like President Bush, he knows the long term policy implications of this, his father would have caved to the Georgetown Kool-Aid. Democrats will gain nothing, this will blow over. There will be no Congressional action because like Terri Shavio, ex post defacto is unconstitutional.
11:12 am
Report
The scene: An undisclosed location in northern Virginia. There’s a knock on the door and Dave E. enters….. Dave: Hail Rove!Rove: Report.Dave: Operation Kossack Fever appears to be on schedule. When the vaccine was released in the form of the
3:32 am
Army of Davids comes to help protest the dangerous
IRIS Blog discusses how an “Army of Davids” in the blogverse (see this item from Instapundit to learn more) has helped to raise an outcry against the US government’s deal to hand seaports over to the United Arab Emirates
5:50 pm
[...] Right Wing Nut House ” ANY PORT IN A STORM…EXCEPT THIS ONE [...]
2:58 pm
I will not argue the details of the deal, I have no strong opinion on the matter, but I will definitely say that your information on Dubai and the U.A.E. as a whole is incorrect. I lived there for nine years and, as an Egyptian, I was not entirely loved by most of the other Arab residents of the country.
Still, I can definitely say that claiming that white slavery and drugs are major problems there is a huge exaggeration. The U.A.E. applies the death penalty when there are cases that involve drugs. Hell, they hanged three local U.A.E.-ians for raping a phillipino woman. (Let me just make the point that most phillipinos in the U.A.E. work as unskilled labor or maids/nannies).
As about the money-laundering and the use of the money to launch terrorist attacks issue, that again is too much of an exaggeration. The United Arab Emirates are a moderate country politically with much of their old tribal system still intact. U.A.E. citizens support their rulers and love them, I have seen this myself.
And why shouldn’t they? They get lots of benefits, free education and health care etc. The U.A.E. is a rich oil-producing country which has managed to develop its economy in a much more realistic and sustainable manner than any of their Gulf neighbours that the United States is currently in cahoots with.
Finally, let me just inform you that politically speaking (since many people keep stressing this point), the U.A.E. DOES have links to Iran; they hate the state. The two countries have been in a state of constant conflict and bickering over various islans in the Arabian/Persian gulf for over two decades now. Iranians sometimes cross illegaly into the U.A.E. but the government in Abu Dhabi (The Capital city of the U.A.E.) is quite cold towards Tehran.
All the best.
1:40 am
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