Brooks was brilliant on the Imus show this morning. He was spot on in his criticism of the opponents of the ports deal.
This post shows the weakness of the opponent's argument. THere is no evidence of real threats to security, just the appeal to our base fears. Some muslims are terrorists, therefore no muslims can be trusted. Some muslims are rioting about cartoons, therefore we can't trust any companies from the middle east. UAE may be our partner in the war on terror, but they are muslim and therefore can't be trusted to with ports they will pay us for yearly.
Thus the differences between different arab nations is whitewashed, the possibility of a "moderate muslim" is discounted, and blind bigotry is excused based on guilt by association.
THe opponents have the upper hand, because there is no "constituency" for the deal. There may be a lot of people who, having seen the facts, will support the deal -- but people like me have no real skin in the game. What do I care if DP World gets the ports or not?
Meanwhile the opponents are highly motivated and willing to fight for what they believe. This is what makes our government so disfunctional. Often the right thing is obscured because the majority is unmotivated while the minority, being directly effected, are highly motivated to make sure government works for them.
Indian gambling interests can pay off congress for legislation because most of us, while we would "oppose" gambling, aren't going to spend money lobbying to stop them. Every regulated industry has a great incentive to spend money to make regulations work for them, while the consumers effected have little interested in sending their dollars to support good government.
In this case, there are few supporters who love free trade so much they are willing to go strongly to the mat for this. Most of us admit that we WISH there was an american company to do the job.
But don't confuse the tepid acts of the supporters for lack of strengh in the rightness of the argument. IT may not be a no-brainer to allow the deal to go through, but those who claimed it was a no-brainer to STOP the deal were smoking something that they shouldn't.
"Some muslims are terrorists, therefore no muslims can be trusted."
No, MOST terrorists are Muslim, therefore no Muslims can be trusted.
Kind of like most rattle snakes are piousness, therefore no rattle snakes can be trusted.
The best lack all conviction while the worst
Are filled with a furious intensity.
Brooks is right on, Buchanan is a moron (took him 3 days to paste together this nonsense), and there's an excellent editorial on this in today's London Times. DPW will be managing their terminals as well.