Bush In The Toilet (Or Shall We Say Port-A-Potty?)
by sarabeth at 6:00 am on February 23rd, 2006 in Bush Man DatePresident Bush is under attack from all quarters again, this time over the imminent “takeover” by DP World of “operations” in six major American ports. Much to my own surprise (I never thought this day would ever come) I’m somewhat on his side. That is to say, I just don’t get the whole national security argument that is being invoked to attack the deal. It’s an easy button to push, and given that the Bush administration has been the most shameless pusher of this button, there is certainly an exquisite irony in seeing him at the receiving end of this treatment. But it’s funny how the facts have managed to absent themselves from most stories on the subject.
Operations at the ports in question are actually “run” by the American subsidiary of a British company, Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Navigation Company (P&O to its friends, apparently). That’s not going to change. What is going to happen is that P&O will now be owned by DP World, which is owned by the U.A.E.
It is not at all clear how the change in P&O’s ownership threatens national security in any way. All the hue and cry is evidently because the U.A.E. is like, you know, an Arab country. But why does this jeopardize national security any more than if DP World were owned by the British government, say?
One, despite all the smoke and mirrors, the government of the U.A.E. is no more friendly towards terrorists than the British government is. But much more importantly, two, P&O doesn’t run these ports any more than I run 1115.org. Matt and Jason are kind enough to give me space here to speak my mind. But that’s all I’m doing at 1115.org, receiving space. And he that giveth space can easily taketh it away (though of course we all hope it will never come to that).
Many of you are probably thinking, hang on, that’s not a fair comparison. It may well surprise you that the comparison is not only fair but almost exact.
Here’s the Christian Science Monitor describing P&O’s role in “running” the port of New Orleans:
For instance, in New Orleans, P&O is one of eight terminal operators responsible for marketing the port, signing agreements with shipping lines, hiring labor, loading ships, and moving cargo.
[…]
P&O will not be “managing” the ports, as many news organizations have reported. Instead, the company is one of many that leases terminals at the port.“I’ve never quite seen a story so distorted so quickly,” says Esther de Ipolyi, a public-relations executive who works with the port of Houston. “It’s like I go to an apartment building that has 50 apartments, and I rent an apartment. This does not mean I took over the management of the whole building.”
Here’s their role in “running” the port of New York: P&O operates the cruise-ship terminal on Manhattan’s West Side, and one cargo terminal in the port. They are going to operate one terminal in the port of New York; they are not going to be running the port. True, it’s one of the biggest terminals in the port. But that’s all it is.
So enough with the paranoia already. But if that’s not enough, we can continue to, three, the security of our ports will remain in the hands of the Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security. P&O is not responsible for port security, so the change in P&O’s ownership doesn’t directly threaten port security in any way. Some of the fears being fanned about the security of the homeland invoke the suspicion that since P&O will now be owned by the U.A.E. government, that will somehow make it easier for al Qaeda to smuggle weapons or operatives into our ports. Hey, come on! Let’s not forget that everyone who has taken a good long look at national security issues after 9/11 has concluded that security at our ports continues to be one big joke. How could port security get any more laughable than it has been for the last four and a half years? Moreover, why on earth should the U.A.E. government’s ownership of P&O make it any easier for al Qaeda, or any other terrorist group for that matter, to infiltrate American ports?
It’s easy to stir up hysteria, and this hysteria can be easily exploited for political purposes, so hysteria has been duly stirred up. By people who have come dangerously close to using phrases like “the glorious fatherland”. But I have yet to see a single cogent argument for how this facilitation of infiltration is supposed to work in practice. There is absolutely no reason to believe that P&O will now be willing to turn a blind eye to terrorist infiltration. Infiltration could still happen, just as it could before, but the probability of infiltration has probably come down, if anything, due to the increased scrutiny that P&O’s operations will now be under.
Representative Peter T. King, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has said: “In the post-9/11 world, there should have been a presumption against this company”. I don’t know about that, but in this post 9/11 world, there should certainly be a presumption that everyone who can further his political agenda by invoking 9/11 (whether or not it has any real relevance) will do so. They’ll invoke it early, they’ll invoke it often. And then they’ll invoke it one more time, just to be safe.
All that being said, there are clearly questionable aspects to the deal. (In a Bush administration there would have to be, right?) The proposed acquisition of P&O by DP World was reviewed and approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), chaired by Treasury Secretary John Snow. And Snow has a clear conflict of interest. Till he joined the government three years ago, he was CEO of CSX, the rail corporation which sold its port operations to DP World in 2004. For the benefit of anyone who may be practicing for the SAT or the GMAT, Snow is to CSX as Cheney is to Halliburton. Then, there’s David Sanborn, nominated by the President in the middle of January to be the Administrator of the Maritime Administration. At the time he was DP’s Head of Operations for Latin America and Europe. It’s true that at the time of the review, no one currently in the Bush administration was actually in bed with DP World. But between those who had been in bed with them before and now hold key positions in the administration, and those who were in bed with them at the time of the review while concurrently holding hands with the administration, there are more than enough question marks to warrant a full-fledged review by anyone interested in exercising oversight of a government that seems to deem itself beyond review.
Finally, a parting shot at the President, just to clear my sinuses, as it were. Why does this President – who came to power with a razor edge majority – insist on running the government as if there is only one side to every issue (his)? Repeatedly, policies or decisions that are clearly contentious – be it NSA domestic spying or DP World running major American ports – are pushed through in secret or with no public discussion, without Congressional approval or oversight, as if there were no opposing viewpoint to be considered, and as if the framers of the Constitution had never envisioned a system of checks and balances to executive power? If this is his idea of uniting, I would hate to be divided by him.
JimC wrote:
I agree, the reproting on this has been confusing and you could see it on ABCNews last night. They didn’t know how to react. They did come out and give basically the same facts as you did about the security operations and even the day to day operations would not change. I was actually on the fence about this issue until these facts came out and now I support the deal given the ramifications of the apparent racist nature of opposing it.
Posted 23 Feb 2006 at 8:43 am ¶
JimC wrote:
My second reaction was, this could be a ploy to allow GOP congress members to make themselves distinctive from the President. But I primarily think it is just a knee jerk reaction and after the facts are trickled out, more GOP members will be ok with it. What’s interesting is Jimmy Carter actually supports the deal, crazy world, what’s next, Cats and Dogs living together?
Posted 23 Feb 2006 at 8:46 am ¶
sac wrote:
This is all about what SaraBeth describes in the last paragraph of this post, and also about the 2006 and 2008 elections. Also, when do we get elect Jimmy Carter as Supreme Leader for Life? Seriously, that guy rocks.
Posted 23 Feb 2006 at 9:31 am ¶
screwtape wrote:
Good guy, crappy president. I would rather have Bill Clinton - crappy guy, great president.
Posted 23 Feb 2006 at 9:34 am ¶
sarabeth wrote:
But I agree with sac: as elder statesman, Jimmy Carter really rocks.
Posted 23 Feb 2006 at 9:36 am ¶
Matthew Tobey wrote:
I can’t remember who it was, but someone recently called Carter America’s best ex-President. He’s sort of the Bob Uecker of politics.
Posted 23 Feb 2006 at 9:51 am ¶
Andrew wrote:
I think the real issue here is something that everyone is avoiding becuase they don’t want to admit the truth. Nobody wants an Arab country connected with the ports of our country. The President asked why no one cared when Britain ran things, well that’s because the British weren’t strapping bombs to themselves and killing people all over the world, rioiting, burning buildings, making threats, kililng innocent people, and countless other things.
Seriously, we need to stop avoiding this issue and come to grips with it and be hoenst with ourselves. Although nothing negative whatsoever may come of this transaction, it is a testament to what people really feel. The Islamic extremists have tarnished the Arab people as a whole, and it is going to be very hard for anyone who pays attention to what is going on in the world, to learn to accept and trust people from the middle east. It’s a terribly sad testament, but it’s true, and the sooner we come to grips with it, the sooner we can start figuring out what to do about it.
It also doesn’t help that our president blithly goes about doing whatever he wants, carte blanche, and he has lied to us numerous times through his administration. That’s just icing.
Posted 23 Feb 2006 at 4:56 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
I don’t see how anyone is avoiding this issue. This is precisely the issue that everyone who has voiced opposition on grounds of national security has raised, either explicitly or implicitly.
And I don’t think I begin to agree either with your argument that prejudice is inevitable under the circumstances.
I do think it is extremely helpful if everyone speaks only for themselves and doesn’t presume to know what “everyone” feels. If you are now irrevocably prejudiced towards Arabs, that’s fine. But that doesn’t quite seem to be what you are saying.
When you say “it is a testament to what people really feel”, I think it’s really a testament to what unscrupulous politicians think they can manipulate people into feeling (by appealing to irrational fears more than prejudice).
Posted 23 Feb 2006 at 6:01 pm ¶
Andrew wrote:
Why would you say that prejudice is not inevitable? When you think of a terrorist, what is the first thing that pops into your head? I’m sorry but I think if you ask 99% of the population, they will tell you a person of Arab decent. It’s hard to not think that when almost every terrorist attack carried out IS by someone of Arab decent. I’m not saying that there have not been non-Arab or even non-Islamic terrorists, because there have been, but can you name any attacks in the past 5 years that did not involve Arabs or Muslims?
The same can be said about black people. The fact of the matter is, black people are judged with some form of racism every single day. Most people may not think so, they brush it off and say “Oh I don’t judge anyone who is black” but it’s a lie. Black people, because of our society, are looked at differently than white people. The reasons for this lie directly on whites, because they instated modern slavery which caused an eventual snowball effect into what we have today. But you cannot deny that people who are black are not inherantly judged and inherantly prejudiced against just because of the color of their skin.
As for your last statement, I obviously cannot speak for the majority of our country, (who I believe still remains vastly uninformed of what is going on in their back yards let alone the world), but I’d have to say that whether this issue with the U.A.E occurred or not, a majority of the people in this country are scared of Arabs at this point. They feel this way because every other day there is some form of media - American or otherwise - that is filled with some form of heinous, violent crime committed somewhere in the world. Whether it be 40 innocent people dieing in a car bombing in a marketplace in Iraq, to 146 people dieing in riots in Nigeria, to a young man being dismembered tortured and set on fire in France, to blowing up their own mosques.
I’m sorry, I just don’t think that it’s politicians manipulating peoples feelings, the proof is in the pudding. These aren’t weapons of mass destruction that we were foiled into believing really existed, this is real as you can get, and it’s getting out of control.
Posted 23 Feb 2006 at 7:02 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
1) So your “argument” is that all the terrorists I can think of are Arabs, therefore it is inevitable to think of all Arabs as terrorists?
2)
Yes, of course, all of us have racist attitudes towards blacks, and we lie to ourselves about it. And presumably when you say “most people” your definition of “people” excludes blacks. And who did you say is racist again?
3)
As far as you are concerned, being scared of Al Qaeda equates to being scared of all Arabs?
4)
I would respond to this if there was any human way to figure out what the heck it means.
(I don’t expect I will be wasting my time responding to anything you may choose to post in response.)
Posted 23 Feb 2006 at 8:02 pm ¶
sac wrote:
So sarabeth, are you OK with this deal then?
Posted 24 Feb 2006 at 7:03 am ¶
sarabeth wrote:
Here’s what I was trying to argue in my post: I think it needs to be scrutinized, not for reasons of national security but for conflict of interest reasons.
Posted 24 Feb 2006 at 7:57 am ¶