I have been observing and even posting on other blogs my opinions on the whole port deal that has turned into something akin to Katrina shoving water into New Orleans via copious amounts of wind.
The controversy over the deal seems to center on port security as Rep. Duncan Hunter(R-CA) and allies like Sen. Hillary Clinton(D-NY) all vow to block the deal. Hunter is worried that security details of the ports will be compromised while Clinton has staked out a similar position, that the sale will compromise security and President Bush should have known about it.
I must ask Hunter and Clinton to re-examine their thoughts on this matter. DPW is trying to buy the rights to manage port operations. They are not bidding on running or operating the ports, that will fall to lower level managers and longshoremen who are already in place. Security will still be run by Homeland Security/Coast Guard/Customs along with the vigilence of those lower level managers and longshoremen.
The point that is overlooked is a very vital point. Hunter and Clinton, and by extension others who are up in arms, by their statements are sending another message to the United Arab Emirates and the Middle East. We want your oil, we don't mind paying you money, but don't you dare buy into the American dream. DPW and by extension the UAE, is trying to diversify its economic portfolio by becoming the managers of these ports because they know their oil reserves won't last forever.
Just twenty years ago the fear was Japan would buy up all of America. The sign of the coming economic apocolypse was the sale of Rockefeller Center to a Japanese company. There was even a book called 'The Coming War with Japan' that laid out the economic reasons why Japan and the US would go to war. That war never happened. The triad of Japanese zaibatsus, MITI, and the banks inter-dependence was never fully understood, even in Japan, until bad loans ate everyone's bento-box lunches, the vaunted Japanese economic bubble burst, and some in Tokyo thought about slicing open their bellies. When the same Japanese companies that bought so much high-priced American property tried to sell it off, they lost their shirts and got pennies on the dollar in return.
We should be seen encouraging DPW and UAE into joining more fully the global economy. During this newly imposed time of review I hope Washington DC and DPW work out ticklish items like security while realizing what is truly at stake, bringing the economies of the Middle East more fully into the global economy in products/services not directly tied to oil production.
By bringing more prosperity to the people of the Middle East, the hungry flea-ridden mongrel called terrorism will find more and more doors shut in its face.
2 comments:
That's a very wise and brave stand to take Anna. I've been saying similar things for a while now and taking quite a bit of flack.
Alot of our conservative friends have some real concerns about this deal. But many of them are also expressing points of view that are based on little more than distrust of any and all Muslim countries.
Since it is not practical, nor desirable to go to war with every Muslim nation, we do have to make some alliances with nations that are strategic in nature.
I would much rather have a few terminals at even fewer ports run by DPW, with it's American Chief Operating Officer, than the Chinese, a strategic competitor, taking over ports in California and around the Panama Canal (a strategic waterway if ever there was one).
It's very interesting that Senator Hill is making such a fuss over this deal and hubby Bill is raking in the money from the UAE advising them how to GET the deal. What is the saying about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing?
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