Posted on 02/24/2006 10:18:56 PM PST by Reagan Man
“This Dubai port deal has unleashed a kind of collective mania we haven’t seen in decades ... a xenophobic tsunami,” wails a keening David Brooks, “a nativist, isolationist mass hysteria is ... here.”
The New York Times columnist obviously regards the nation’s splenetic response to news that control of our East Coast ports had been sold to Arab sheiks as wildly irrational. In witness whereof he quotes Philip Damas of Drewry Shipping Consultants, “The location of a company in the age of globalism is irrelevant.”
But irrelevant to whom?
Why is it irrelevant, in a war against Arab and Islamic terrorists, to question the transfer of control of our East Coast ports from Britain to the United Arab Emirates?
Our cosmopolitan Mr. Brooks lives in another country. He has left the America of blood and soil, shaken the dust from his sandals, to enter the Davos world of the Global Economy where nationality does not matter and where fundamentalists and flag-wavers of all faiths are the real enemies of progress toward the wonderful future these globalists have in store for us.
“God must love Hamas and Moktada Al-Sadr,” snorts Brooks, “He has given them the America First brigades of Capitol Hill.”
To Brooks there is little distinction between Islamic mobs burning Danish consulates and America First patriots protesting some insider’s deal to surrender control of American ports to Arab sheiks.
But the reflexive recoil to this transaction between transnationals is a manifestation of national mental health. The American people have not yet been over-educated into the higher stupidity. Common sense still trumps ideology here. Globalism has not yet triumphed over patriotism. Rather than take risks with national security, Americans will accept a pinch of racial profiling.
Yep, the old America lives.
Like alley cats, Americans yet retain an IFF, Identify-Friend-or-Foe radar that instinctively alerts them to keep a warier eye on some folks than on others.
But in rejecting a deal transferring control of our ports to Arabs, are Americans not engaging in discrimination? Are they not engaging in ethnic prejudice?
Of course they are. But not all discrimination is irrational, nor is all prejudice wrong. To discriminate is but to choose. We all discriminate in our choice of friends and associates. Prejudice means prejudgment. And a prejudgment in favor of Brits in matters touching on national security is rooted in history.
In the 20th century (if not the 19th), the Brits have been with us in almost every fight. It was not Brits who struck us on 9/11, who rejoiced in the death of 3,000 Americans, who daily threaten us from the mosques of East and West, who behead our aid workers, bomb our soldiers and call for “Death to America!” in a thousand demonstrations across the Middle East. And while not all Muslims are terrorists, almost all terrorists appear to be Muslim.
As Mother Church has a “preferential option” for the poor, there is nothing wrong with America’s preferential option for the cousins.
Does this mean all Arabs should be considered enemies? Of course not.
The folks from Dubai may detest the 9/11 murderers as much as we do, for those killers shamed their faith, disgraced their people, and bred a distrust and fear of Arabs and Muslims that had never before existed here.
Yet, just as sky marshals seat themselves behind young Arab males, not grannies taking the tots to Disney World, so, Americans, in deciding who operates their ports, naturally prefer ourselves, or old friends.
Why take an unnecessary risk? Just to get an A for global maturity on our next report card from the WTO?
The real question this deal raises is what happened to the political antenna at the White House? Did it fall off the roof about the time President Bush named Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court?
Anyone in touch with Middle America, especially after 9/11 and endless warnings of imminent attacks on U.S. soil, would know this country is acutely sensitive to terror threats. Surely, before approving this deal with Dubai Ports World, someone should have asked:
“How do you think Bubba will react when he’s told sheiks will take over the port of Baltimore where, in Tom Clancy’s ‘Sum of All Fears,’ Arab terrorists smuggle in an a-bomb and detonate it?”
Apparently, no one bothered to ask, or the question was brushed off in the interests of hastily greasing the deal.
Now this episode is going to end badly. Bush, who has denied advance knowledge of the deal, is being ripped by liberals for living in a pre-9/11 world and being out of touch with his government.
As for our remaining friends in the Middle East, they have been given another reason to regard Americans as fickle friends who, down deep. Don’t like Arabs.
Unquestionably, this will result in a victory for those who wish to sever America’s friendships in the Arab world. But it is Bush and his unthinking globalists, not the American Firsters whom Brooks cannot abide who engineered this latest debacle.
No just a shoe bomber that was rejoicing with the Al-Quaeda terrorists that blew up the underground in London.
Then so are Jimmy Carter and the New York Times.
(the uproar against this deal) "is a nativist, isolationist mass hysteria ..." David Brooks, N.Y. Times
"This is a good deal, and it ought to be consummated" Jimmy Carter
Howlin, this is a timeline. The section begins in 1996 and discusses events up to Sept. 2001.
The report specifically says UAE is a hub for Al-Queda during this time.
Is this the DU, I could have sworn I typed in Free Republic?
Your name would be better as "unheard"
On this issue, PresBush has shown himself to be more of a corporatist, then a conservative. His defiant public statement earlier this week, was a PR nightmare. Bush and Kerry are both globalists. Kerry more so than Bush is.
>>>>Bush has changed how and why I don't know but he has.
What your seeing, are the first signs of what is called the Presidential Fatigue Factor. It occurs in every second term. Happened to Ike, Reagan and Slick. Except with Bush43, its coming on a little early. The PFF doesn't usually appear until sometime in the last two years of the second term in office. Not a good sign for Dubya.
How does giving up our sovereignty constitute long term strategic thinking. You act like the UAE only allows us use of their ports on the condition that we give them our ports. Or that that will not be our friends if this deal goes south. Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabia needs US. They need us to protect them from Iran, they need us to buy their oil, they need us to patrol their gulf, they need us to retain their grip on power from their masses. We do not need to give them the keys to our country. they need us more then we need them. We do have an entire country in the gulf now it is called Iraq, we do call the shots there and will for a long time.
Well how would you handle the WOT?
I know you're nowhere near the button or anywhere near a position of power that really matters that would embarrass us.
Could be. Interesting find. Thanks.
It seems to me that jceritas can't handle debate... Possibly he has wet his pants...
Great Britain, Israel and Australia are America's only real friends in the world. Germany's new conservative leader is trying her best to corrcet past diifculties and that's good. I don't consider the UAE to be America's friend. Before 9-11 I wasn't too happy with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and the other Islamic nationstates. Since 9-11, my dislike of anything MiddleEastern has grown in intensity. I don't have a problem with the deals we have made with the UAE over there. America's best interests always come first. I say, lets keep those deals over there, and not import them over here.
And yet, Communist China has 50% of the terminals in Los Angeles and others in CA. What should we do, not have any trade? retract all our troops from the whole globe and hide in in a little hole?
Good question....first we should use our strengths instead of selling them. Our economy is second to none, our marketplace is the best real estate in the world. Any capitalist knows that you do not give away prime real estate away for free. Right now our market place is a free entry. We should charge for entry be it alliances, tariffs, sweet deals on oil below market prices. Our Army is the best in the world. Add more troops to Iraq project power and control. Bring up the standard of living for the avg muslim. Educate the masses of the world. America was the founder of the green revolution that feed the world I see no reason why we can not educate the world. We rebuilt Europe from the ground up. Export our knowledge. Help fund schools that take students away from the terror schools that as of now are the only chance many muslim youths have to learn to read and write in any type of structured learning environment. Show them different types of worldview. Give them choices. Cut off international aid to terror states. That at least would be a start. Germany and Japan thought thought their worldview was right, we taught them differently in war and in peace, Our PR machine is in a very bad need of an upgrade.
Excuse me, but I resent being lumped in with the racists over at DU. As a Conservative, I am race and nationality neutral.
IMO, America is rightly and justly at war with JIHADISTS - not all of Islam (note the distinction).
You were doing fine up until this post. Stop the sillytalk.
We can stick with the status quo, or we can make the proper changes that are necessary to reach the desired results we want. Having Red China control any US ports of entry is something straight out of the twilight zone. This gets us back to CFIUS, and its rubber stamping all those sweetheart deals. What was done with DPWorld/UAE is along the same lines. All of these deals have placed US national security in jeopardy. Pretty obvious to this conservative. Wouldn't you agree?
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