Thursday, March 09, 2006
The Port’s Deal Revisited
Well, it looks like it is off.
What to make of it.....hmmm....
Well, I think that this was all much ado about nothing. The UAE is an ally, and a moderate, wealthy, educated Islamic country. Since the security issue was a non-starter (the DHS and the Coast Guard would have retained the full responsibility for the ports and the securance of them), I think this was a whole lot of election-year grandstanding and a knee-jerk reaction by both parties.
However, there were two knee-jerks.
The Republicans saw the agreement, and said “Holy COW! An ARAB country! Our borders are already under siege! We gotta stop this!” Was there a bit of profiling and racial distrust involved? Sure. Was it understandable? Yeah. I didn’t agree with it, but I understood it. Thee weren’t a lot of Congressional Republicans that took the next step. It was all about “Arabs controlling our ports.” and the deeper information (Allied Arab country, strategic partner in WoT, economic improvement because DPW is the best at terminal management in the world) was unmentioned.
The Democrats, however, rose up against it for one reason: George W. Bush was for it.
The Democrats have blasted every move in the WoT...from Iraq, to the failure to get bin Ladin, to Iran, to Gitmo Bay, to the NSA, and to the Patriot Act, the Left has been against every step that the Administration has taken. They have taken up against the President at every turn, and have failed to act in the national interest unless their elected positions were in doubt. In this case, they did the same thing, but cloaked themselves in the excuse of ‘national security’.
That is why they (the Democrats) are not happy. They got exactly what they wanted, right? They ports deal is off, the Republic is secure......right? However, look at their reactions. They are still not happy. Here’s what Nancy Pelosi said:
“The Republican proposal only stops President Bush’s current backroom Dubai ports deal. It does not prohibit future ill-advised Bush administration agreements that will let other firms controlled by foreign governments operate in U.S. ports, nor does it address the lack of U.S. cargo security, which poses an even larger threat,”
How about John “I was in Vietnam” Kerry:
“Dubai deal or no Dubai deal, it’s clear that this is just the tip of the iceberg of the administration’s failure on port security. A new report from the Department of Homeland Security shows that Target does a better job monitoring their stores than our government does monitoring our ports. Their failure to put together a basic program after all the warnings must be a wake-up call to finally get it right on homeland security.”
They aren’t happy because they lost the issue. They don’t have a huge mistake to hold over the head of Bush. The Republicans killed it off so that it couldn’t be used against them in November. Short sighted and juvenille, but look how it pissed off the Democrat senators! Now all they can do is talk about his it needs to be addressed so that ‘backroom’ Bush can’t do this again...even though, by his own admission, he had little to do with it.
You want a reason why I am losing respect for the Democratic Left and the Democratic Senators? This is one. They couldn’t even build a dedicated, intellectual opposition to this issue. They could only bash Bush, and now that they have lost the issue to a quick-thinking GOP, they are pissed off.
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Comments
Sweet! Looks like I need to shop at Target!
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