CONTRARY VIEWS
At first, I thought that I held a lone contrary view on the outsourcing of port management to a Dubai company. Then, I heard President Bush's strong defense of the arrangement, when he finally learned about it. Agreement with Bush on anything should give one pause. So my support is wavering.
Obviously, management of U.S. ports has already been in foreign hands. So is it wise to draw the line when these hands are Muslim? Not so. A distinction could be made since this Dubai company is a owned by the government. However, there well may be cases where government ownership would not be disqualifying. Canada? Mexico? Singapore? So, depending on what port management really is, the logical, difficult course is to have a set of guidelines on the characteristics of acceptable governments that will not exclude all Muslim nations. The United Arab Emirates may or may not qualify, but Bush will clearly suffer on this one, particularly since he has
failed to take necessary security measures to safeguard our ports.
My other "contrary" view is held even less certainly. It just seems to me that the U.S. and Israel are making a mistake in squeezing the Hamas government in Palestine.
Yes, Hamas has unacceptable views; but at this stage these are mostly just words. Rather than actions such holding back funds that actually belong to the Palestine government, further inciting hostility and chaos, let's give it a chance to evolve, without necessarily explicitly changing its views.
At first, I thought that I held a lone contrary view on the outsourcing of port management to a Dubai company. Then, I heard President Bush's strong defense of the arrangement, when he finally learned about it. Agreement with Bush on anything should give one pause. So my support is wavering.
Obviously, management of U.S. ports has already been in foreign hands. So is it wise to draw the line when these hands are Muslim? Not so. A distinction could be made since this Dubai company is a owned by the government. However, there well may be cases where government ownership would not be disqualifying. Canada? Mexico? Singapore? So, depending on what port management really is, the logical, difficult course is to have a set of guidelines on the characteristics of acceptable governments that will not exclude all Muslim nations. The United Arab Emirates may or may not qualify, but Bush will clearly suffer on this one, particularly since he has
failed to take necessary security measures to safeguard our ports.
My other "contrary" view is held even less certainly. It just seems to me that the U.S. and Israel are making a mistake in squeezing the Hamas government in Palestine.
Yes, Hamas has unacceptable views; but at this stage these are mostly just words. Rather than actions such holding back funds that actually belong to the Palestine government, further inciting hostility and chaos, let's give it a chance to evolve, without necessarily explicitly changing its views.
1 Comments:
It is rather scary to think the president might actually be right on something but I agree that this time he is. There is simply no credible increase in security risk from the Dubai management change.
We faced a similar situation in Long Beach when a Chinese owned company wanted to be a major player in the port. This was in the 90's but from the rhetoric and "Red Chinese" baiting, you would have thought it was the 50's. Turned out to be a political move by San Diego politicians to move more business their way.
I'll bet this has nothing to do with principles of either party, just a way to make the president look bad or pay some debts.
By
Arnold, at 8:13 AM
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