Editorial: White House Fails To Stop Anti-Port Deal Bill

Getting authorization for Dubai Ports World (DP-World) to take over terminals in six U.S. ports is proving to be more of a challenge than the Bush administration apparently expected. Efforts by the White House to hold off legislation challenging the acquisition failed last week.

The Washington Post reported on March 8 that Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) planned to attach legislation to block the purchase to a must-pass emergency spending bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is expected that a House vote on the measure next week will set up a direct confrontation with the president, who has vowed to veto any bill that would stop or delay the DP-World acquisition.

The transaction, some say, has been in the London newspapers and in The Wall Street Journal for months without reported opposition. Last month the issue exploded into a real firestorm. Perhaps instead of The Wall Street Journal, the issue should have been reported for months in county and small-town papers across the U.S. The average person may not subscribe to the WSJ and certainly doesn’t read London papers. It certainly is not just Joe average that is concerned, however.

We have heard arguments from industry and government officials who say the United Arab Emirates is a good ally in the war on terror and that DP-World is trustworthy. That may be. We also have seen overwhelming opposition from the public and congressional members on both sides of the aisle. DP-World suggested a 45-day review of the issue, which may also serve as a cooling off period. Sultan Bin Sulayem, DP-World’s chairman, told CNN that the review is a good chance “for all of us to think. And I think by the end of this, they will realize that there is no fear, no worry about security.”

While we do not take issue with the sultan’s viewpoint, we might remind him that port security is the most vulnerable segment of homeland security. Ports have been uppermost in the list of concerns. Billions of homeland security dollars have been spent on airports, while the ports have gone begging.

We were told that there was no opposition in the 14-person committee that passes on issues such as this. Then we learned that the Coast Guard had objected at first but later withdrew its objection. We were told that committee members believed that the business at hand was routine and that they did not want to bother the president with it. No cause for alarm here, they obviously thought.

Federal officials are privy to a great deal of information that is not commonly known to the public but perhaps should be. For example, how many foreign countries and/or businesses own land in the United States? How many foreign companies already operate terminals in U.S. ports? While many consider these things common, the rest of us are without a clue. Even the fact that CSX sold operations to Dubai was not widely known.

So when a supporter of the Dubai port deal uses as an excuse that foreign companies already operate X number of terminals in the U.S., that doesn’t cut it. The public doesn’t know that. If the Dubai deal is scotched, there may be some repercussions.

The fear sparked by this issue is not based merely on perception. We are told daily that the war on terror continues and we must fight it. We hear daily that terrorist cells exist everywhere, even within our own boundaries. We know they do. Occasionally we are told that the “terror meter” alert code has changed. Then there are the all-too-frequent video and audio messages from terrorist leaders announcing efforts to strike us once again.

The average Joe and Jane in America are being reminded constantly of danger. Suddenly, out of the blue for most of them anyway, they are told that DP-World, owned by the United Arab Emirates—a country that does not acknowledge the existence of Israel and has laundered money for terrorists—is going to take over operations at six ports. Making matters worse, the news media keep using the word “ports” rather than “terminals.” Even though the issue is over terminal operations and not entire ports, a terrorist event would impact the entire port.

Topping it off, some very high-ranking retired military officials and lots of present-day senators and representatives of both major parties say the deal should not be authorized. Why should the public not be concerned? For them it is like putting a fox (an Arab country) in charge of the chicken coop.

We live in a country where the governing leaders are hell-bent on globalization. Nothing is apparently too good for our world trading partners. We’ve outsourced millions of jobs. We’ve exported manufacturing. We have serious immigration issues and are now told that immigrants make up 5 percent of our workforce. We have a shockingly negative balance of trade. Social Security is a major issue. Health care is an ongoing concern. There is a constant debate over whether or not we should be fighting a war in Iraq, and many believe the multi-billion-dollar response to Hurricane Katrina has been a fiasco.

Under overall prevailing conditions, it seems to us that a firestorm over Dubai is more normal than abnormal.

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