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February 23, 2006

The ports deal: Our belief in the terror rhetoric now threatens administration's good business deal

Why would George W. Bush toss away the organizing principle of his administration since 9/11 -- "tough on terror" -- in the ardent pursuit of a deal to give management of six American ports to Dubai Ports World -- a state-owned firm of the United Arab Emirates, a banking country that funneled money to those who hijacked the planes, including two of its own citizens; recognized the Taliban, served as Osama bin Laden's banker, before 9/11, and was the conduit for Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Q. Khan to move the technology for making atomic bombs to Iran, Libya and North Korea?

The administration brushes off grassroots security concerns in its ardent support of this odd deal that even waives some normal conditions of doing business with the United States.

This morning, according to ABC News, "President Bush on Thursday sought to calm an uproar over an Arab company taking over operations at six major American ports, saying 'people don't need to worry about security.' "

Yet, in today's Washington post (Republicans Split With Bush on Ports),

Joseph King, who headed the customs agency's anti-terrorism efforts under the Treasury Department and the new Department of Homeland Security, said national security fears are well grounded.

He said a company the size of Dubai Ports World would be able to get hundreds of visas to relocate managers and other employees to the United States. Using appeals to Muslim solidarity or threats of violence, al-Qaeda operatives could force low-level managers to provide some of those visas to al-Qaeda sympathizers, said King, who for years tracked similar efforts by organized crime to infiltrate ports in New York and New Jersey. Those sympathizers could obtain legitimate driver's licenses, work permits and mortgages that could then be used by terrorist operatives.

Dubai Ports World could also offer a simple conduit for wire transfers to terrorist operatives in the Middle East. Large wire transfers from individuals would quickly attract federal scrutiny, but such transfers, buried in the dozens of wire transfers a day from Dubai Ports World's operations in the United States to the Middle East would go undetected, King said.

We all get this. Why doesn't the adminisistration, which is tossing our privacy to the wind for the "greater good" of national security and heading off terrorist attacks. We're baffled that the President immediately threatened to veto any Congressional attempt to limit the deal, his first veto ever. Why does he care so much, and worry so little about these practical concerns?

I found Simon Jenkins' latest column in The London Times illuminating: Bush and Blair have brilliantly done Bin Laden's work for him Here's a bit of it:

Were I Bin Laden I could not have dreamt that the spirit of 9/11 would be so vigorous five years on. I have western leaders still parroting my motto that “9/11 alters everything” and “the rules of the game are changed”. I have the Taliban resurgent, financed by Europe’s voracious demand for oil and opium. I have the Pentagon and Scotland Yard paying me the compliment of a “long war” of indefinite duration. My potency is said to require more defence spending than was needed to contain the might of the Soviet Union....

...Indeed if ever there were a case for collective restraint it is in response to terrorism. The word refers to a technique, usually a bomb, not an ideology. A bombing is an anarchic gesture calling for police and medical services. It becomes a political weapon only if publicised and answered with hysteria. A killing is so staged as to cause over-reaction, violent response, mass arrests and a decay of civilised values. Bin Laden’s intention in 2001 was to portray the West as scared, emotionally vulnerable, over-reactive, decadent and careless of liberal values. The West has done its damnedest to prove him right....

There is now a voluminous literature on the politics of fear and its distorting appeal for democratic leaders (this month alone, David Runciman’s admirable The Politics of Good Intentions and Peter Oborne’s The Use and Abuse of Terror pdf, first chapter). The 9/11 “changes everything” mantra began as an explanation of a national trauma and a plea for sympathy. It was hijacked to validate the latent authoritarianism of democratic leaders.

The administration cannot have it both ways. Either the terrorist threat is real, in which case we need to zip up America, run our own ports and restrict investments in critical infrastructure to our longtime allies. Or bin Laden is a boogeyman, useful for achieving a level of domestic control long held in check by the protections for civil liberties and privacy inherent in the American Constitution, but definitely in the way when it comes to attracting investment from Arab countries flush with oil money.

Having scared Congress into blessing most of its foreign and domestic initiatives in the name of security, the administration is now forced to wink as it hauls out Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, who retains his position despite the disastrous handling of Katrina, to "reassure" us on Meet the Press Sunday,

“We’ve built in, and we will build in safeguards to make sure that these kinds of things don’t happen. And, you know, this is part of the balancing of security, which is our paramount concern, with the need to still maintain a real robust global trading environment.”

Do we believe him?

The Guardian (U.K.) reports (Arab Co., White House Had Secret Agreement) that,

As part of the $6.8 billion purchase, state-owned Dubai Ports World agreed to reveal records on demand about "foreign operational direction'' of its business at U.S. ports, the documents said. Those records broadly include details about the design, maintenance or operation of ports and equipment.

The administration did not require Dubai Ports to keep copies of business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to court orders. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate U.S. government requests. Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries.

In addition,

...Under the deal, the government asked Dubai Ports to operate American seaports with existing U.S. managers "to the extent possible.'' It promised to take "all reasonable steps'' to assist the Homeland Security Department, and it pledged to continue participating in security programs to stop smuggling and detect illegal shipments of nuclear materials.

The administration required Dubai Ports to designate an executive to handle requests from the U.S. government, but it did not specify this person's citizenship.

It said Dubai Ports must retain paperwork "in the normal course of business'' but did not specify a time period or require corporate records to be housed in the United States. Outside experts familiar with such agreements said such provisions are routine in other cases.

Sounds like we badly want this deal. Why?

That former president Jimmy Carter emerged as Bush's only high-profile supporter on this deal, and the administration subsequently hired the lobbying firms of both Bob Dole and Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to spin it, only adds to the surreal environment around trying to have it both ways: The administration is arguing that we're safe with the deal because global corporations have no loyalties, no ideology. This is about making money together. Nothing to see here, move along.

Like a bucket of cold water, the Dubai Ports World deal is serving as a reality check on the difference between the administration's rhetoric and its assessment of the actual likelihood of attack.

Perhaps it's time for Congress to look with more discernment at the administration's requests in the name of terror, and to take an even longer look at what the blanket fear of terrorist attacks has wrought at home. As Jenkins notes,

The American president and the British prime minister have spent half a decade exploiting Bin Laden for political ends, in thrall to their security/industrial complex. They have relied on terrifying their electorates with new and bloodcurdling threats, with what Runciman calls “spook politics”. But they will pass. ... The vitality of British and American democracy has always been its ability to produce antibodies when truly challenged by an internal or external menace. The West will rediscover its self-belief and restore the liberalism, properly defined as freedom, that it once exemplified to the world.

If this ports deal causes Congress to suddenly remember its constitutionally ordained role as a check and balance on executive power, something useful may yet emerge from this debacle.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 10:07 AM | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: Kiersten Marek on February 23, 2006 7:57 PM

Posted by: donna on February 24, 2006 1:49 AM