Any Port (Operator) in a Storm

The recent flap concerning the sale of U.S. ports may have escaped your notice this past week. After all, the Vice President tried to assassinate an attorney the same week the news broke that British world port operator P&O was bought by Dubai Ports World, an entity based in the United Arab Emirates. Well, truth be told, DPW has not bought any ports, nor can they. The physical ports are owned by the Ports Authority in the various regions. What DPW has bought, with their purchase of the last British owned port operator (there are no American operators left), is the rights to terminal space at six ports in the United States: New York, Port Elizabeth NJ, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans.

Let me stress the fact that I am not in favor of the ports being operated by any Arab nation, let alone the one that laundered funds for Al Qaida, and recognized the Taliban as sovereign before U.S. military might made that a moot point. What I am in favor of though, is the end to all the posturing and rhetoric espoused by self-serving politicians from both sides of the political divide. Republicans and Democrats alike are racing for the television cameras to avow their adamant opposition to "sales of American ports." As I mentioned above, what was sold by the merger of P&O and DPW are the rights to operate dock side services, including shore electric power, cleaning, waste disposal and storage. DPW has purchased the rights to physical space, and the opportunity to charge for services, and nothing more. This is akin to any of the various big city apartment management companies operating dozens of buildings for absentee landlords, for a small percentage of the take, of course. The building in which I live is just such a residence. A maintenance man takes my trash to the curb, fixes my plumbing, and handles minor improvements. He is too, ostensibly, at my beck and call around the clock. That is what DPW is interested in becoming: a maintenance man for the world's ocean going trade here in the United States.

Romania, Germany, Djibouti, Puerto Cabello in Venezuela, Adelaide in Australia, 5 ports in China, including Shanghai, and 3 in Hong Kong are just some of the ports operated by DPW. In fact, DPW is one of the world's fastest growing port operators. It is a concern that is vying for preeminence in a world which lists Maersk-Sealand of Norway as one of the major players. What the sale of P&O effectuates is the replacement of British upper management with UAE upper management. The CEO, CFO and COO will simply start sporting kaffiyahs, instead of staid Saville Row suits. The local Ports Authority will still patrol the ports. The US Coast Guard will still ply the waterways. The US Customs Service will still inspect the pitifully inadequate 5% of containers they inspect. In other words, nothing will change except the destination of the profits.

That's what rankles me. Although Dubai has become one of the safest ports of call for the US Navy, a tourist attraction for most of the Far and Middle East and a public denouncer of Al Qaida activities, it is still the home of two of the 9/11 hijackers and the source for illegal funds transfers by Al Qaida before 9/11. That they are now considered a partner in the War on Terror, both by their administration and ours, does nothing to cool my ardor. I simply do not trust them, yet. Let them continue to build bridges and things can change. My grandfather, a World War II veteran of the Burma-India campaign, did not live to see the immense friendship we developed with the Japanese. He would have been stunned to see US Army infantrymen being handed water and foodstuffs by Japanese support personnel, in a combat zone no less. In time maybe, just maybe, the UAE can become a friend and valued trading partner. I will go on record as saying I doubt it, but stranger things have happened. We did, after all, drop an atomic bomb on two cities in Japan.

The end result of the brouhaha has been twofold: true discussion of the deal on its merits has been stifled, and the Democrats in congress have been forced to admit that we are, indeed, fighting a war against a serious enemy. This is in direct contradiction to their previous positions. If they were consistent they would welcome this deal with open arms. After all, we are the ones creating terrorists in Iraq. We caused the majority of the world's ills. This deal would go a long way toward healing those wounds. That even the obstructionist Chuck Schumer, (D) New York, sees this deal as ill advised should gladden the hearts of many, but it does not gladden mine. What it does is sour my stomach to know that he, and those like him, through self-aggrandizement, will today rail against "selling our ports to foreign nations unfriendly to us," and tomorrow complain about unauthorized wiretaps, which actually do combat terrorism. In retrospect, my opinion of the whole mess is, to paraphrase Sun Tzu in The Art of War, when you cannot make your enemies your friends, kill them with bullets.