The highly-charged debate over U.S. port security and the involvement of an Arab-owned company has raged all week. With little time for in-depth study, it's been hard to use the customary shorthand method of taking a side: pick out a reliably idiotic politician or pundit, and choose the opposite.
This time the savvy WSJ editorial board and foolish ex-president Jimmy Carter agreed with President Bush, while usually dependable Michelle Malkin, hatemonger radio host Michael Savage, and two-faced pol Hillary Clinton were united in opposition. Very odd.
Worldly-wise Mansoor Ijaz is well-connected and smart. His take:
The Dubai deal is a showcase example of how to deal with important issues confronting America's disquiet about where it stands in an increasingly integrated world -- whether by examining U.S. double standards in trade and protectionism policies, analyzing the internal failures in U.S. government response to provide adequate security at our ports or preventing U.S. reactions from appearing as xenophobic or Islamophobic to our most important Muslim allies. America cannot have it both ways on these issues any longer.Critics of the Dubai deal raise the specter that terrorists might somehow infiltrate U.S. port operations. This displays a lack of understanding about what would be involved in Dubai owning and running U.S. facilities....
If the Dubai controversy helps American lawmakers and the White House craft better policy for every foreign company doing business on our shores, not just the Arab ones, a quantum leap in our security will have been achieved.
Overall port security is an area where the Bush administration has failed the American people, Dubai deal or not. This imbroglio should prompt the administration to speed up technology development -- perhaps even in conjunction with Dubai's innovative investment funding -- already under way in U.S. laboratories and at some premier U.S. defense contractors.
Glenn Reynolds, the omniscient InstaPundit himself, writes in the Wall Street Journal (subscribers only) on how the story has unfolded, and what that means for the White House.
When the story first appeared, bloggers were overwhelmingly negative. My own reaction, on Feb. 12, was "color me unimpressed." Other bloggers were more pungent, but the story got little attention in the national media, which were mostly preoccupied with the Cheney quail-hunting story. Most bloggers didn't dig deeper either.By this past week, the port story had heated up. More bloggers piled on, and so did an increasing number of leading media and political figures. Talk radio was all over the topic, and the temperature of the discussion was high.
Some bloggers, meanwhile, were having second thoughts. One of them was me: Although my initial reaction was negative, I started getting emails from readers -- some of them longtime correspondents -- who had experience with the UAE. One had served alongside troops from the Emirates in Afghanistan; another had spent time in Dubai. Some had worked with UAE ports officials. All were positive.
[I]t's not clear where the rest of the debate is headed, but there are already some useful lessons for the White House. First, blogs make an excellent early warning system. The White House, unaccountably, seems to have been blindsided by the furor over this deal, though most people's gut reaction was negative. As with the many bloggers like me who changed their minds, gut reactions can be overcome by evidence -- but the White House should have taken advantage of this early warning to have its arguments in order. It didn't.
That's the second lesson: The White House should not only have read blogs, but responded to them with information and arguments, rather than waiting for blog readers to weigh in.
As discussed here often over the past five years, this administration, for all its reputation for political mastermindery, is remarkably inept at using strategic communications with both its allies and its foes to avoid these kinds of sandtraps.
That's more than just a political problem for an administration. It endangers us all when a global War on Terror is mishandled and loses support. Unfortunately, second-term presidencies tend to get worse, not better.
Posted by Alan at February 25, 2006 09:38 AM