Ports Deal Quashed, Kind of.

Rather than my repeating myself about this deal, I was waiting for somebody else to say it.  Maureen Dowd does a good job this morning:

President Bush does not seem to understand that it was his bumbling -- rather than our bigotry -- that led Americans to gulp and yelp at the idea of an Arab government running our ports. When the president said yesterday that "my administration was satisfied that port security would not have been undermined by the agreement," he seemed oblivious to the fact that -- after W.M.D., Katrina and Iraq -- many Americans no longer trust this administration to protect them.

Still shaken by his first rebellion by Republicans fed up with White House hubris and hamhandedness, W. chastised lawmakers about xenophobia. "I'm concerned about a broader message this issue could send to our friends and allies around the world, particularly in the Middle East," he said. He said that we had to cultivate moderate Arabs, but that moderate Muslims were shrinking back as violent Islamists pushed ahead.

American skepticism about the Dubai government running our ports is not prejudice. As Denny Hastert put it, "It's counterintuitive." There is nothing wrong with wanting Americans to be responsible for American security. That's not nativism or jingoism or bigotry. It's self-reliance and prudence. Of course, such an attitude can be exploited by bigots. And some bigotry is being fed by scenes on the news every day of Arab fighters blowing things up, leading to the same stereotype of Arabs that existed in the 70's, a caricature limned from terrorism, oil and the petrodollar.

The president preaches that we are seriously threatened by autocratic Arab societies that won't modernize and become free markets, but then his cozy relationship with autocratic Arab regimes, including the Saudis, continues basically unchanged.

As Michael Hirsh of Newsweek summed up in a recent column: "How then did we arrive at this day, with anti-American Islamist governments rising in the Mideast, bin Laden sneering at us, Qaeda lieutenants escaping from prison, Iran brazenly enriching uranium, and America as hated and mistrusted as it ever has been? The answer, in a word, is incompetence."

It's incompetence and a sense that the parties which have the most influence on White House policy are motivated by their own political and economic interests more than what is it the best interest of the American people. I don't trust them to do anything for the right reasons, and I think that the common mistake that links people who supported the war with those who support the Dubai Ports deal lies in their thinking that the issues can be discussed as if it were a debate about abstract policy principles.  They make their case  as if a more fundamental issue was irrelevant, namely the motivations and competency of this particular administration at this particular time in history.

The more fundamental discussion should not be about whether Saddam should or should not have been toppled.  It should not be about whether foreigners should run our ports, or whether something has to be done to constrain Iran's nuclear ambitions.  These are certainly questions to debate and reasonable people can disagree about the answers to them, but they are not relevant to the root issue.  No matter what the right policy might be in the abstract regarding these questions, the more important issue is whether we can trust this government to do anything without making things worse. 

This government, with questionable legitimacy from day one, has proven itself to be one of the most reckless, corrupt, and destructive in American history.  Has it any credibility or moral legitimacy at all at this point?  Can we or should we trust it in anything?  I know life goes on, and we have to work with what we have, but if we can't throw these thugs out, we should at least put them under house arrest.   My assumption is that everything they do is harmful until proven otherwise. The Dubai Ports Deal is only one among many issues that need to be seen in this light.  It has to be understood in this larger context.

The  supporters of the Dubai Ports deal make the mistake of looking at the issue as if the Bush administration were worthy of our trust.  But whether or not the WTO globalization logic used  to justify this deal has merit in the abstract, it doesn't make sense at this particular time given who the players are in this particular melodrama. If I had confidence that this administration had given the Coast Guard and the customs officials the resources they need, maybe I'd feel a little better about Dubai Ports running the business end. The administration has not made port security a priority, and its blatant cronyism  in all things having to do with the Middle East gives reason for pause. But it boils down to my having no confidence in this government to do anything competently or to do anything for the right reasons.

I don't know if DP is ok.  Maybe it is.  But we're renting in a tough neighborhood without adequate police protection, and I don't trust the landlord to find the right tenant.  DP might be a sweet old grandma, but what about her misbehaving grandkids whom she can't control when they visit?  That's the concrete reality. It's  not about letting fear dictate policy; it's about being prudent. Prudent is the last word I would use to describe this administration and its approach to everything.

The Dubai Ports deal would be questionable at this time even if we had adequate port security, but given who's on watch now, it simply makes no sense.

Comments

[Mike McG...]

Any chance it was Bush's bumbling *and* our bogotry, Jack?

[Jack Whelan]

Mike--

Is it bigotry to think that there are Islamic terrorists who want to do harm to Americans? Is it bigoted to recognize the simple fact that Arabs from Saudi Arabia and UAE have been involved in this kind of terrorism? Are we therefore supposed to pretend that there is no threat and therefore no need to take special precautions for fear that to do so is a product of our bigotry?

Am I or you or anybody with a modicum of down-to-earth prudence a bigot if we are a more careful when we're walking through a high-crime neighborhood? Is it not true that while most of the people in that neighborhood are good, decent, law-abiding citizens, they nevertheless have little or no control over a minority of bad guys who also live in that neighborhood? Am I supposed to feel safe in the knowledge that most of the people in the neighborhood are good and decent, or is the better measure of prudence to recognize the threat that comes from the minority of predators there whom the unfortunate majority lives in as much fear of as any visiting outsider does?

It's that dangerous smaller group, whether they are insurgents in Iraq, terrorists in Dubai, or gangmembers in Chicago that we are foolish to pretend are not what they are for fear of being branding their neighbors.

Mike, you've been reading my stuff for a while and you know how attuned I am to the the skewing effect of reactive fear on our policy decisions, and how I think that fear should never dictate policy. But that does not mean that prudence has no place in our thinking about what we must do. Prudence is not reactive; it's by definition a clear-headed asssessment of the best way to respond to a real threat.

My attitude toward the DP deal is about taking seriously the obvious threat posed to our too-vulnerable ports by Islamic Terrorists at a time when our ports are notoriously vulnerable and when we have an administration whose priorities about providing effective security against that threat are hopelessly out of whack.

When I'm walking in a high crime neighborhood, I feel a lot better if I see a cop walking the beat. Apparently the cops in our ports are underfunded and understaffed. So here we are inviting a government-owned business from a country known to be unable to control the terrorist activity within its own borders to run our vulnerable ports. To me that's nuts. If my thinking so is by your definition bigotry, well, I just don't know what to say.

[Mike McG...]

I think we're missing each other here, Jack. I definitely don't think your thinking is bigoted, but I also don't think the only route to disapproval of the ports deal is your sophisticated one. I'm simply observing that this issue has attracted strange bedfellows on both sides and wondering whether both reasonable people and xenophobes might not arrive at the same policy decision. Actually, I thought I was making a point similar to yours re: too facile reading of intentions. The right/left binary doesn't work in this case, or in many others.

[Jack Whelan]

I think tht there is a xenophobic element that is a factor here that is causing some in the GOP to defect from the administration line. I think that there are a lot of people of a politically correct mindset who are reacting to that tendency and who are very reluctant to associate themselves with the xenophobes. "If they're for it, I have to be against it," seems to be the emotional logic of their judgment. And this is an opportunity to show their evenhandedness in supporting Bush when they think he is right. There are so many levels on which this deal bothers me, and nothing bothers me more that the DLC free trade mentality to approve anything that the global market demands.

I have found this liberal tendency to be poltically correct about not stigmatizing all Arabs, ncluding nice Arabs like those at DPW, pretty annoying. And I am arguing against that tendency more than the other xenophobic one.

I'm glad this deal got quashed, but the "kind of" in the title suggests that I'll believe it when it's a done deal.