Posted on 03/10/2006 12:33:17 PM PST by groanup
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
The New Protectionists - How to create a real security crisis.
Friday, March 10, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Dubai Ports World finally threw in the kaffiyah on its American operations yesterday, agreeing to sell them "to a U.S. entity." We hope that entity turns out to be Halliburton, if only for the torment that would cause certain eminences on Capitol Hill.
Dubai Ports was susceptible to this political stampede because it was an Arab-owned company buying port operations, which Democrats have played up as uniquely vulnerable. But this is also the second such mugging of a foreign investor in recent months, following last year's demagoguery against a Chinese company's bid to buy Unocal, a middling American oil company. If Members of Congress want a real security crisis--a financial security crisis--they'll keep this up.
What's especially dangerous here is that we're seeing the re-emergence of the "national security" protectionists. They were last seen in the late 1980s, when Japan in particular was the target of a political foreign-investment panic. The Japanese were buying Pebble Beach and Rockefeller Center, and so America was soon going to be a colony of Tokyo. A Japanese bid for Fairchild Semiconductor of Silicon Valley was seen as a threat to American defense. Those fears seem laughable now. But here we go again, with new targets of anxiety.
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(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Ran a search. If a dupe please remove.
conerns over infrastructure and defense related entities - are real.
if the UAE had wanted to buy Applebees, would anyone have cared? no. they own alot of manhattan real estate, did anyone complain? no. if they want to buy a casino, do we care? no.
the arguments about this being "protectionism", are laughable.
>>>>More broadly, U.S. economic and defense security are intertwined. Imagine the threat to American well being if investment capital were trying to flee the U.S. because it believed opportunities were better elsewhere.
Or, if we behaved as stupidly as say Mexico, and nationalized any foreign country we thought we could grab just to appease our sense of national inferiority.
Laughable yes, but the WSJ at least learned its lesson and omitted the "free trade" argument - Dubai doesn't practice anything of the sort.
So that's an improvement.
"National Defense Protectionists"
Sign me up!
Sign me up too !
In that vein. WSJ deploys here the "mental illness" attack which labels opponents as phobic, rent with anxiety. Ironically this mental illness attack pieces often are written in a nervous near manic style.
I read this in the Journal this morning. Also read Larry Lindsay's piece. He had to throw Smoot and Hawley and Herbert Hoover in his column and the very scary date of October 1929. So predictable. Globalism has a very thin skin.
And how do you spread the idea of free republican form of government with people in the mid-east while telling them that commerce with us is off limits?
And how do you spread the idea of free republican form of government with people in the mid-east while telling them that commerce with us is off limits?
What do these two have to do with eachother? We're not telling them that commerce with us is off limits. We'll buy and sell from you freely but you're not going to own or manage the store.
Woohoo!!! a new party is just born right here on FR that will take the USA by storm and control all the branches of government within few years (sarcasm beyond belief).
The Sky is Falling.
In other words, get your @ss over to the slurpee machine and shut up.
Globalists vs. America Firsters bttt!
In other words, get your @ss over to the slurpee machine and shut up.
Apparently, debate is not allowed with you, eh.
Tell me where I'm wrong. That's exactly what you meant.
That's exactly what you meant.
Meant when I said what, exaclty?
"Woohoo!!! a new party is just born right here on FR that will take the USA by storm and control all the branches of government within few years (sarcasm beyond belief)."
Overstatement works as satire when ascribed to the target alone. Your overstatement "sarcasm beyond belief" reverses the intended object of the satire to the speaker, you. This humor is a form of self-deprecation. Did you intend that?
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