Home----Essay Index

Port Insanity

 

Wow.  Isn't politics sickening?

Okay, so liberals and conservatives have very different perspectives on national security.  We all know that.  But you'd think someone, somewhere, would at least be mildly interested in the facts about security issues.  Then along came this proposed deal to transfer control of several major US Ports to a UAE owned company.  A political crisis erupts.  Oh no!  An Islamic, terrorist country is going to control our ports!  We'll have no way to stop the terrorists from bringing the big nuke into the country now!

Liberal and conservative members of congress alike have simply gone nuts over this, as if the Bush Administration is blindly and unknowingly giving up port security to Osama bin Laden. 

There's one slight problem with this--it isn't true.  There's no security threat whatsoever.  This is pure politics and pure, unadulterated American racism.

Why is this BS?

1) The company that controls a port terminal doesn't control the security--at least not directly.  That's still the responsibility of the Coast Guard and other government agencies. 

2) The people actually running the ports after the deal will be the same people running them before, with few exceptions.

3) So far as I've heard, no expert on port security can be found anywhere that actually believes this is some kind of major security risk.

And if you're not yet convinced the "threat" here is complete nonsense, listen to this report from NPR's All Things Considered.  If you can't trust the "liberals" at NPR telling you this is crap, who can you trust?

But why the crisis?  Coming from democrats it's understandable.  Since 9/11 they've been desperately seeking any opportunity, no matter how small or patently absurd, to make the Bush Administration look weak on national security.  This deal presented the perfect opportunity for democrats to play up their claim that the administration cares more about lining the pockets of its business partners than it does about anything else, including security.  I mean how corrupt do you have to be to sell off port security to a terrorist nation?

It’s complete nonsense, but it’s a political opportunity democrats can’t ignore.  But why are so many republicans coming out against this?  Aren’t they supposed to back the President?

I think this is politics too, and it’s very disturbing. 

Bush is polling badly, and a lot of congressional republicans appear interested in putting some distance between themselves and the president.  More importantly, the democrat’s argument—nonsense that it is—is resonating very well with the public.  The dems want to make republicans look corrupt and weak on security, and it’s working.  The best political response for congressional republicans is to agree with democrats and blame it all on the President.  They’re saying, essentially, “It’s not the party—it’s Bush.  It’s okay to keep voting for us.”

This kind of political distancing is possible only because Dick Cheney refuses to run for President.  Were he running, Congressional republicans wouldn’t be able to afford to distance themselves by turning on the Administration—as that might hurt the Vice President’s chances of winning the next election.  Since that isn’t happening, the best course for Republicans is to isolate the President’s ailing poll numbers as much as possible.  That, I think, is why you’re seeing both democrats and republicans agreeing on a security threat that doesn’t actually exist.

What really makes me puke my soup on this one is that none of this would be happening if there wasn’t a public perception that all Muslims are terrorists and all Islamic countries are terrorist organizations.  If England were buying these ports…if France or Italy…the Philippines…if almost any other country on earth were buying these ports, we wouldn’t be talking about this.  It’s alarming that we so easily, and so automatically assume that our security is greatly imperiled if a country with the word “Arab” in it starts buying into port operations.

This is pure racism.  When you willingly dismiss, disregard, and ignore actual facts about a situation, and base judgments solely on the origin of the people involved, that’s racism.  I get so sick of people telling me racism isn’t a problem in this country anymore.  Look how quickly it can pop up in a situation like this.  No one even considered examining the facts.  The reasoning was simple: There are Arabs involved.  This must be bad.

How can we expect Muslims to stop making generalizations about Americans when we can’t even do it ourselves?  C’mon people, you should be ashamed of yourselves.  We ought to be past this kind of racism. 

And we’ve got to stop letting our representatives get away with lying about things like this for political purposes.  We have to hold them accountable for this crap.

Oh, and as long as we’re talking about things that will never happen:

It’s worth noting that US Port Security is and will remain frighteningly lax no matter what the outcome of this deal is.  Practically anything could be smuggled into this country.  Practically everything is, including cocaine and heroin.  This is something we’ve known about since 9/11 and nobody’s done a thing about it.  And that’s because we, the people, simply aren’t paying attention.  The Republicans do nothing and the Democrats can’t get your attention about it until they find some racist, bullshit way of doing it.  That’s on you and me.  At root, this whole thing is on all of us.  We have to pay better attention.

Which, as I said, probably won’t happen.

 

Home----Essay Index