The fickle defenders of freedom need to decide

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Jonathan Gurwitz:

True meaning of security drowned in port uproar

Web Posted: 02/26/2006 12:00 AM CST

San Antonio Express-News

When Hillary Clinton tries to outdo Pat Buchanan as a xenophobic protectionist and Jimmy Carter comes to the multicultural defense of George W. Bush, you know something is terribly wrong in the world.

The problem is not only that a company owned by Dubai's ruling family is set to take over operation of some of America's largest ports. The bigger problem is that the race to pile on the Bush administration and condemn the Dubai Ports World deal reveals how utterly capricious our elected leaders' commitment to national security actually is.

The words "national security" are routinely dismissed as the vocabulary of fear-mongers, the passwords of a secret state and the motto of an administration bent on creating a Fourth Reich in America. No Internet indictment of George W. Bush is worth its ethereal weight unless it contains some reference to Nazism and fascist crimes committed in the name of national security.

But look who's invoking national security now to blast the decision, not of Bush, but of the 12-member, multiagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, to approve the transfer of one foreign company to another foreign company.

What are the security implications of that transfer? Port owners across the United States contract with businesses to manage operations at their shipping terminals. Twenty-four of the world's 25 largest terminal operators are foreign, including Britain's Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co., which Dubai Ports World purchased.

Irrespective of the national home of the terminal operator, the Department of Homeland Security - through the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection Immigration and Customs Enforcement - is responsible for security at American ports. Dubai Ports World's buyout of P&O doesn't change that fact.

Yes, two 9-11 hijackers and more than a few jihadists have come from the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part. And the Emirates have served as a haven for financial transactions in support of terrorist groups.

But shoe-bomber Richard Reid came from Britain. And Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who served as his spiritual leader and that of so-called 20th hijacker Zacharias Moussaoui, preached his message of hate and violence at London's Finsbury Park mosque.

Where have the port protectors been for the past four years?

Arab American interest groups that, unfortunately, too often act as apologists for Arab extremism have a valid point with regard to Dubai Ports World. No one on Capitol Hill cared who ran American ports, had heard of P&O or gave a whit about its security record until Arab money got involved. Some of the same leaders who routinely object to any national security policy that might remotely resemble ethnic or religious profiling of airline passengers are leading the attack against Arab ownership.

And they're also some of the same folks who are decrying the surveillance of communications with known terrorists. They condemn Bush for allegedly violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in order to advance national security, and in the next breath assail him for allegedly compromising national security by respecting the legal process of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Sure, let's have a debate about the laws pertaining to foreign ownership of U.S. assets and the process that scrutinizes it. Let's criticize the White House for its bad instincts with regard to secrecy and its miserable job of informing Congress and explaining to the American people the issues involved with Dubai Ports World.

Let's even flog Bush for not making an elementary distinction between a publicly traded company responsible to its shareholders for making decisions that maximize profits and a privately held concern whose complete list of owners is unknown and whose guiding principle may be something very different from the profit motive.

But for God's sake, the fickle defenders of freedom need to decide which is more important: the right not to be profiled, not to be snooped upon if you call a foreign terrorist and to live free from the intrusions of government on individuals and businesses or national security.

jgurwitz@express-news.net

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