The Republican spin is that we are being racist, ethnocentric, and biased against Arabs for no good reason,
to be outraged at the sale of 21 ports to a UAE company from Dubai.
The reasons that come to my mind are not without merit. Aside from the lack of accountability and incompetence and situational awareness already demonstrated, where does the Bush administration come down on Dubai's ongoing involvement in narcotics, slave trading, child prostitution, and money laundering?
Does the US consider this organized crime, or given the Bush administrations advocacy of kidnapping, torture, murder and holding without habaes, just business as usual?
This is more complicated than it seems.
Putting all the issues of
what Dubai is aside, and just looking at the wisdom of selling off our infrastructure and wildernesss to foreign corporations, I see that as the main issue regardless of who we are talking about. Its no excuse that the government has been quietly approving these deals since Nixon took office, it just needs to be stopped.
Like Amsterdam and Nevada the UAE openly allows drugs and prostitution and a lot of other activities we call either organized crime or business depending on our perspective but Dubai is also cutting edge in many ways.
The UAE is party to Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change, Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection and signed, but not ratified the Law of the Sea.
Dubai has a lot of foreign workers. 73.9% of the population in the 15-64 age group is non-national (2005 est.) The average citizens life expectancy is 72 yrs male and 78 yrs for a female.
The UAE has no population below the poverty line and an unemployment rate of 2.4%. It has revenues of $34.93 billion and expenditures of $29.41 billion, including capital expenditures of $3.4 billion (2005 est.)
It has almost 100 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and about half that much natural gas, plus its in a good position to take the oil from Hawtah. It gives about 5 billion a year in foreign aid off revenues of about 100 billion and it spends about 1.5 billion a year on its military.
Despite that there is no suferage, and its essentially a federation of emirates, its embrace of extremists is in some ways more liberal than fundamentalist.
Its a rich country so its in the position that if it sticks it to those bastards its really sticking it to itself.
I admit to being a little biased by its urban planning, architecture, and social psychology and I haven't been there for a while, but the general impression it conveys is new, modern and very high rise. Much more so than any American or European city I have visited.
The UAE has been a drug transshipment point since 2600 BC and like a lot of other places its also involved in money laundering and some things that exploit human beings beyond the point where we should consider doing business with them.
In the case of the UAE these go beyond the usual third world sweat shops and child labor to include trading in slavery and child prostitution. Its biggest customer for these things is probably Saudi Arabia.
If it gets down to is Dubai a terrible place, for the most part no not really and we are in no position to be pointing any fingers, but if Bush thinks Dubai is a model citizen it would be interesting to get his perspective on the slave trade.
If we keep selling off US infrastructure to foreign nations and selling off our wilderness areas, whats left to preserve, protect, and defend besides the Constitution Bush has been trying so hard to undercut?
Its unlikely the coast guard and customs can stop WMD's from coming in any better than they can drugs from coming in, this is an area that needs a lot more study and somebody in charge of it that is actually paying attention to what is going on. Take for example the fact that Dubai has one of the worlds highest AIDS rates for its child prostitutes. Does a container of AIDS bearing child prostitutes coming into each of 21 ports every month constitute an attack with biological weapons?
In order to manage the terminals we have to give the UAE information about shipments coming to and leaving from the US, the plans and computer systems we use to track data in our ports,... what happens when we go to war with a country again such as Iran or China?