Quoth
The Craven Evermore
By William Fisher
14 March, 2006
Countercurrents.org
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- For those who enjoy the political
theater of the absurd, the Dubai Ports World soap opera was the only
show in town last week.
And it was a hoot! The actors
came straight out of Central Casting.
Here was George W. Bush admitting
he knew nothing about the deal, but vowing resolutely to defend it to
the death in the interest of national security. The United Arab Emirates
were among our most steadfast allies in the “Global War on Terrorism”.
Quickly appeared the Majority
Leader of Senate Republicans and presidential hopeful, Dr. Bill Frist,
doing another drive-by Terry Schiavo diagnosis and quickly rushing to
distance himself from his poll-challenged president, only to flip-flop
the next day in favor of a 45-day ‘national security investigation’.
Enter Senator Hillary Clinton
and her senior partner, Senator Chuck Schumer, racing to get to the
right of George W. Bush to prove that the Dems are really hawkish on
national security. Pushing to ban any foreign “government-owned”
company from “buying” any American seaport, ever. Especially
a country that sent us two of the 9/11 hijackers and used their banks
to launder money to help terrorists.
Then there were those courageous
Republicans across the Capitol in the House of Representatives, all
up for reelection in November, all terrified by being led by an unpopular
second-term president, virtually all voting in lockstep to kill the
ports deal – and, at the same time, putting as much daylight as
possible between their stumbling selves and their stumbling Dubya and,
as a bonus, inflicting a bit of ego-flexing payback to the commander-in-chief
who ignored them for six years.
It’s an old adage in
Washington that the most dangerous place to be is between a politician
and his microphone. And our always-patriotic lawmakers lost no time
in using their mikes to whip up a toxic cocktail of misinformation to
get their constituents drunk with jingoistic paranoia.
A project in which they were
immeasurably helped by “The media”, which ran story after
clueless story about this government-run Arab company “buying”
our ports.
Small wonder then that, outside
the Beltway, the people of America stopped watching The Simpsons long
enough to rise up to speak with a single shrill voice: “No foreigners
(read Arabs) running our ports!”
Not to worry that most of
“the people” had never heard of the United Arab Emirates,
couldn’t find Dubai on a map, and had not the slightest clue that
most of America’s seaport terminals are already managed by foreign
companies – including the largest, Long Beach, California, run
by a company owned by our great friend and staunch ally, the Government
of China.
It’s consoling to know
that the people had so much in common with the Congress. And with the
media.
Doubtless with a little friendly
arm-twisting from Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, Secretary of State
Condi Rice, and the venerable Senator John Warner of the Armed Services
Committee, Dubai Ports World threw in their keffiyehs. They announced
they would sell their U.S. port assets to “a U.S. entity”
(providing they could avoid taking a financial bath in the process).
We still don’t know
precisely what this means, but that’s OK; that’s the least
we don’t know.
Among the unanswered questions:
If, as has been widely reported,
there is only one U.S.-owned port management company, and it’s
too small to take on the Dubai Ports World job, who’s going to
run these port terminals?
If the Coast Guard and our
Customs folks are ultimately responsible for port security, does it
really matter who runs the terminals?
What, if anything, is wrong
with the Treasury-led inter-agency review process that approved the
UAE deal without telling the President, anyone in the Cabinet, or anyone
in the Congress -- and what’s going to be done to fix it?
How is our public diplomacy
maven, the culturally-challenged Karen Hughes, going to ‘win the
hearts and minds’ of all those who think we’re doing a little
unsubtle ethnic profiling of all things Arab?
And, most importantly, what
exactly has our wildly dysfunctional Department of Homeland Security
been doing to strengthen our seaport security? And at what cost?
These are serious questions.
But don’t expect serious answers. It’s an election year.
Call Central Casting.
* With apologies to Edgar
Allen Poe for playing with his words (Quoth the Raven Nevermore) in
his poem, “The Raven”.