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Port deal should not go overseas
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The objections to Dubai Ports World taking over the contracts to manage operations at six U.S. seaports boil down to this: it’s not based on U.S. shores.
DP World is owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates, and it acquired the port-management contracts for New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans when last week it bought a British-based firm with a wonderfully 19th-century name: Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co.
The Bush administration has to approve the change, and is poised to do so with assurances from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that “the deal is appropriate from a national security standpoint.” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the Justice Department had also vetted the takeover, planned for March 2. But a political firestorm is whipping through Congress.
A bipartisan group of federal lawmakers including Senate GOP leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., are urging Bush to kill the deal. Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Robert Menendez of New Jersey are authoring emergency legislation to do just that.
The UAE and some defenders claim this criticism must be a form of racism because the tiny, oil-rich Persian Gulf state has been a strategic partner for the U.S. in the Gulf region and “a leading partner” in the war on terror. They add that Americans didn’t object while Brits were running these ports.
The truth is only a few Americans had even the vaguest idea that a foreign-based company was in control of any of our ocean gateways. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, we naively assumed the Bush administration had taken the most basic steps to protect such highly vulnerable targets.
Simply put, our ports should be in hands of American companies over which Homeland Security officials can exert the greatest oversight. Anything else would be a reckless shirking of duty to protect our nation from terrorist infiltration and political corruption.
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