This is not going to be a full-blown article on this topic, it is just something that has been pissing me off lately.

http://www.dpworld.com/subpages.asp?PSID=1&PageID=21

Anyone who has been following the national news as of late is familiar with the congressional bru-ha-ha going on over the Dubai Ports World deal. Basically what’s happened thus far is that DPW had placed a winning bid to administer control over the U.S.’s largest ports. President Bush gave his support to this deal for what appear to be economic (both above and below the table) reasons and was speaking out to garner approval for this decision.

What happened next is mind-blowing. Congressmen from both sides of the aisle starting speaking out against DPW controlling these ports and Bush’s decision to support them. I don’t mean that it blows my mind that Democrats would grow spines and speak out against Bush’s decision or even that staunch supporters from his own party decided to buck six years of cow-towing to the president. What pisses me off is the reasons that they give for not wanting DPW to control these ports.

It seems to me that maybe you’d want one of the largest port operators in the country running your facilities. It may be possible that somewhere along the way they picked up a little something on how to efficiently run a port, and it may even be possible that they can competantly secure the facility against ‘terr’ (pronounced like Bush says it).

What pisses me off here is that the only argument that I have heard against DPW revolves around them being a Middle Eastern country. ‘Some of the 9/11′ hijackers came from Dubai’ cry lawmakers. Oh yeah? Well I think a couple may have come from Saudi Arabia, good thing we don’t do them any favors.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that I see this issue boiling down to one simple thing. Call it racism, call it stereotyping, call it prejudice if you prefer. Its there is spades. There is no reason to not let DPW run the ports in this country. Just because Dubai is an Arab country does not mean that they are inherently linked to terrorism or are automatically more likely to look the other way on security issues.

Now the idea is to have a domestic company run the port. All right! A union-run port administrator. We all know how vigilant and incorruptible they are!

I have not heard one logical argument against DPW thus far. I think what this issue has really shown us is just how far our own politicians will go to get re-elected and associate themselves with the war against terrorism.