THE PORT DEAL
There is a certain boy-caught-with-matches quality
to the Bush Administration’s reactions regarding the U.S. port terminal transfers,
like the little kid who has been busy setting fires all over the neighborhood and
then finds, to his horror, that his own playhouse is suddenly threatened.
For those who missed the story–and to do so, you would have had to stop watching
cable and network news for the past several days and toss the front section of your
daily newspaper–a company run by the United Arab Emirates has received U.S. government
approval to purchase the London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company,
a deal which would give the Emirate company–Dubai Ports World–operational control
over most port operations in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Miami, Baltimore,
and New Orleans.
Does that mean U.S. security at those six ports will be less than it was before the
Dubai Port World purchase? We’ll get to that, in a moment. Maybe.
The story has its positive effects, one of them being a running geography lesson
as our national leaders take us into new and interesting parts of the world. Google
searches exploding all over the nation informed us that the United Arab Emirates
is a collection of seven small countries– Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Qaiwain,
Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah–bordering on Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf
of Oman. Instruction in the world economy is also taking place, as we have discovered
this week that actually, “foreign-based companies already control more than 30 percent
of the port terminals” according to the New York Times, including the operation
of terminals in Oakland and Los Angeles by Singapore government-controlled APL Limited
(you’ve probably seen the APL ships and trucks if you live in the Bay Area; you probably
just never knew about the Singapore government connection). We learn in the same
New York Times article this week from Philip Damas, research director at Drewry
Shipping Consultants of London, in fact, that "the location of the headquarters
of a company in the age of globalism is irrelevant."
Apparently not irrelevant to everyone. The proposed Dubai Port World U.S. port operation
takeover–now scheduled for early March, but that could change–has come under intense
criticism from national politicians of both parties in the United States, with the
Republican governors of both New York and Maryland threatening legal action, Democratic
Senator Hillary Clinton, among others, releasing a letter that read in part that
"our port security is too important to place in the hands of foreign governments”
and Republican Senate leader Bill Frist stating that “if the administration cannot
delay this process, I plan on introducing legislation to ensure that the deal is
placed on hold until this decision gets a more thorough review."
In response comes the almost poignant notation in the New York Times this
week that “some administration officials, refusing to be quoted by name, suggested
that there was a whiff of racism in the objections to an Arab owner taking over the
terminals.”
Well of course there’s a “whiff of racism” here, which those unnamed “administration
officials” ought to recognize, since it’s the same one that’s been gleefully fanned
by the Bush Administration over the past four and a half years to fuel its “war on
terror.”
This gets complicated, so let’s try to walk through it slowly.
The Bush family is not anti-Arab, not by any means. The family’s long-held personal
ties to the Saudi royal family in particular and Arab-operated oil companies in general
is well documented (see Kevin Phillips’ Bush family exposé “American Dynasty”
for a good rundown of the Bush Family/Saudi Family connections).
But to raise popular support for the invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration had
to covertly encourage the ugly, anti-Arab sentiment that peaked in the United States
following the September 11 terrorist attacks. And so we had Mr. Bush’s famous post-9/11
remark that “this crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.” The President
later “apologized” for using the loaded term “crusade,” which recalled Christian
Europe’s several military invasions of the Middle East to seize the Holy Lands from
the Muslims, and some commentators at the time tried to pass it off as one of Mr.
Bush’s many dubya-dumbisms. Myself, I tend to think it both calculated and clever,
and wink-and-nod signal to his religious right base that he was reviving the old
Christian-against-Muslim/Arab Holy Wars, and with it the old cries of “death to the
Saracens” and “on to Jerusalem.”
In more formal settings and speeches, Mr. Bush has repeatedly denied and denounced
the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim tendencies that began to rise in earnest in this country
as far back as the first Gulf War. In a speech last October to the National Endowment
For Democracy in Washington, for example, he tried to draw a distinction between
Islam and terrorism, stating that the terrorists he is battling “serve a clear and
focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane. Some
call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism.
Whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam.”
In such a manner did many Southern white politicians and civic leaders announce–in
the dark days of the 20’s and the 30’s–that they were not “anti-Negro,” they were
only against those nigger brutes who lay in wait to rape white women. Their hands
washed pure and clean, these politicians and civic leaders were then able to pretend
that they had no connection to–or responsibility for–the mobs who lynched innocent
black men from Southern oak trees, burning them while still alive and then picking
their “strange fruit” to keep souvenirs of fingers and ears in pickle jars on Mississippi
mantelpieces.
Thus, too, do Bush Administration officials deny that they have any responsibilities
for such things as the dungeons of Abu Grahib, the atrocities at Guantanamo, the
declaration by Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Lieutenant General William Boykin
that he was once able to defeat a Muslim Somalian leader because "I knew my
God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol,"
the denial by Christian religious right leader Pat Robertson that Islam was a peaceful
religion because “the founder of Islam preached violence" (ignoring the violent
roots of Christianity which you can look up in the Bible), all reflecting the simmering,
seething, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiment in many areas of the country, resulting,
in one small example, in the attacks by American terrorists on American Sikhs because
Sikhs wear turbans and grow long beards and so can “easily” be mistaken by the careless
and the thoughtless for Arab Muslim terrorists.
But having sewn the wind of anti-Arab racism, as the old-time preachers used to say,
the Bush Administration is now reaping the whirlwind.
Back to the original question: will U.S. security at those six ports will be less
than it was before the Dubai Port World purchase? If that’s the only question that’s
being asked, we’re missing what’s going on here.