The port management deal

People with short fuses on both sides of the political aisle have gotten angry and excited about a pending business deal. People who should know better are accusing the president of disregarding our nations safety. I have left this one alone because I sensed everyone was jumping on it without thinking things through. The usual complaint against President Bush is he is too aggressive in prosecuting the war on terror. That image is in stark contrast to how some are viewing this deal. The way I see this deal is we have terminals at six ports that were under British management and now are going to be under Dubai management. Why? Because they outbid the Hong Kong company that was also bidding on the contract. Okay. In my view nothing fundamental is changing. A different company will be pocketing the profits is the only change. The actions currently in place to run background checks on port authority employees will remain. We currently only inspect a fraction of the containers entering the country via cargo ships. The reason we don't inspect 100% of containers is because we couldn't without bringing shipping to a complete stand still.

UAE has been a relatively trusted alley in the war on terror. We won't have many friends in the Arab world if we act like we assume they are all as nutty as the extremists. Some of the nuts on the left said after 9/11 that we need to understand why they hate us. Well, exhibiting an irrational fear of any and all Arabs might be a contributing factor. I've been to Dubai, it isn't like Iran. Heck, it isn't even similar to Saudi Arabia. The UAE is comprised of seven emirates (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah, Umm Al Quwain) some are fairly westernized, others (Sharjah) are more restrictive.

Separately, A Large Regular considers the opposition of this deal by some politicians who were against renewing the Patriot Act to be crass political opportunism. He says the way to really drive them nuts would be to turn around and give the contract to Halliburton.

Here is a Wall Street Journal article on this deal and the reaction to it. .