UAE DPW DHS RNC SNAFU

Let me argue both sides. Because, in an ideal Bush presidency, the nuance required to assess this choice as a possible net-plus for our security would not have been squandered. In other words, these guys don't display any innovative or intuitive capacity when it comes to many things, so why should they start now? And who would believe that pitch anyway?

1. Simple question: Are we "at war" as certain War Presidents so like to remind us? If so, then since when do we allow strategic choke-points to be managed by interests which may or may not have our complete security and concerns front and center?

Put simply, UPS wouldn't farm out certain distribution and fulfillment duties to FedEx no matter how smart it might look on paper to some paper pusher. They would find a way to do it better themselves so as to assure their all-too-precious business continuity. Some things just don't lend themselves to market mechanisms. From practical experience, the things I can think of are Education, Big Science R&D, and Security. Each is about redundancy and testing the limits of failure, with each offering downstream blow-back, sometimes catastrophic, for fetishizing frugality and impatience. Practiced effectively, each involves rule-breaking and leaps of intuition and those traits are not easily systematized into the bland paste that markets require for confidence. And don't let anyone tell you this was some stupid unknown bureaucrat-approved deal. DoD, State, Treasury, CIA, and other notable higher-ups meet in secret to asses and approve or disapprove these deals. They knew. They saw. They didn't understand. They didn't get it. And they signed off anyway. Therefore, they should expect to see lots of this kind of picture with many nasty and fact-filled assertions attached come October 2006:



According to Fox News [pdf],

– The UAE was one of three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

– The UAE has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Lybia.

– According to the FBI, money was transferred to the 9/11 hijackers through the UAE banking system.

– After 9/11, the Treasury Department reported that the UAE was not cooperating in efforts to track down Osama Bin Laden’s bank accounts.

The list of WTF-worthy facts goes on and on. 40% of US Army materiel and equipment would pass through DPW's hands--or be held up or disappeared if one were inclined to be a "nervous nellie." Bush administration wizards in January just appointed a senior executive from DPW to head U.S. Maritime Adminisitration. Connected? Who knows. What we do know that UAE has the least strict visa requirements (none for Arabs) of any M.E. or Gulf State (gotta keep thaat tourism coming dontcha know). It is chocka-block with nationals of all sorts, workinng, playing, blending in and nobody much notices anybody eles's business because it's Humphry Bogart Casablanca-crazy with people and growth right now and for the foreseeable future.

Allowing Dubai Ports World and its practical owner, United Arab Emirates to oversee operations of 50% of America's inter-modal transportation introduces too many variables into an already particularly weak point in our national security barrier. It is a logical and emotional non-starter--the bonehead move of un-serious people seeing green, not red, white and blue.

Okay, option Two. (Did you notice how I didn't call Bush a traitor or a puss, Mike?)

2. I don't buy all the knee-jerk "Terror-supporting country to run US ports" hooey, for several reasons. UAE is very friendly to US and western interests. In fact, they're a magnet for western architects and business as they spend hundreds of billions to become the hyper-cosmopolitan "New York of the Gulf" according to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai's President and erstwhile Donald Trump. Their soon-to-begin construction of a $200 bn spaceport (yes, seriously) needs our engineers, NASA tech and national security dual-use approval and goodwill. The ports deal makes sense because:

a. UAE's FDR/Reagan equivalent Sheikh Zayed, who died in 2004, united the Emirate sheikhs, brought the country out of feudalism and turned it toward the west since the 1960s. His son/heir is even more determined about it. Their economy is not so oil rich as their neighbors and the old guy staked their post-oil future on Lear-friendly tourism and rich western folk buying real estate and mansions in places like this:



UAE corporations are essentially plugged into the ruling families of Dubai and Abu Dhabi and their goverments in ways that would make us cringe--okay, make some of us cringe. There is no deniability firewall: One screw-up and they got lots to lose and we're not even talking the glass-parking lot option. That makes them highly motivated.

b. Our ports aren't the only ones Dubai Ports World would manage. They're all over the globe. And DPW pulls a large chunk of it's senior management--American citizens--from US transportation industry firms (they pay *very* well.) Mega-security firms like Kroll International and other credible assessors will tell you that DPW is at the forefront of holistic inter-modal security, far ahead of any US outfit. That credibility is precious. You get trouble at one port, you've just thrown the lot into jeopardy and with it the global transportation economy--DPW's, UAE's, and America's meal ticket. DPW with it's eyes and hands already in ports of embarkation worldwide also matters. Once a bomb gets to its destination and is discovered in Miami, Newark or Baltimore... Boom! Too late. DPW is the "it takes a thief" gambit from the old Robert Wagner TV show. Who better to formally and informally assess and smoke out potential threats emanating from an intricately networked Arab culture we woefully misunderstand than savvy brothers with something to lose from the same culture? You don't have to have to be an historian or a security expert to get the symmetry of this. You just need to have seen a few old westerns and their indian scouts or maybe Last of the Mohicans with Hawkeye and his Chingachkook.

UAE is precisely the kind of enlightened Arab country that we need to ensure gains respect and succeeds in the Arab world. Their example of melding Arabist thinking with modern markets and accountability and stability (and not our far-too alien one) is where the future and successful resolution in the WOT lays.

They truly need us--intact and unharmed--as much as we need them.

So, there you have it. Which is true? Which is the right choice? Two sides of a coin, the second of which can't be credibly played because of the short-sighted, gonad-powered thinking of this current group of amateurs. Ironically, just as only Nixon could go to China, this deal, under a Kerry administration would likewise be just as doomed as it is for George Bush at this time. To a large degree, these kinds of options, aligned with a concerted sensible Marshall Plan for the Middle East are our only useful options and reasonable ROI. Marshall's idea cost 13 bn dollars, 12 bn of which were loans. Well, Bush just asked for $50 bn more on top of $270 billion already spent for the privilege of killing American boys and girls for an imperial idea that Francis Fukuyama, it's progenitor, abandoned with extreme predjudice yesterday in a Scots newspaper interview. That's a lot of money for an orphaned idea on its way to becoming a monstrous failure.

The amount the administration budgets for that precious port security? Approx $500 million for next year after getting beat up over his paltry suggestion of $200+ million. And naturally, that's divided by a hundred ports.

So. We are paying through the nose and creating a drag on profitabilty to world markets, destroying our credibility and dividing citizen against citizen and for what? To create recruitment manna from heaven, for more, not fewer, very pissed off generations of terrorists.

Doin' a heckuva job.