President Bush’s inability to secure our borders doomed the port deal
Dubai’s leaders saved face, theirs and ours, by pulling out of the ownership situation that would have had a Dubai-owned company manage six U.S. ports.
The arrangement collpased because of widespread and often intense popular sentiment against the idea of letting an Arab company manage (or “own” or “control”, as were sometimes erroneously stated in the debate over the harbor deal) the ports.
Defenders of the deal accused opponents of Arab-bashing and Islamophobia, and to some extent they may have been correct, but since Americans have grown accustomed to see Arabs and Muslim burn U.S. flags, kill U.S. hostages or threaten U.S. citizens, rarely contradicted by other Arabs or Muslims, it’s hard to be particularly upset about that.
Another aspect, one that I think mainstream media has underrated, is that Americans have also come to understand that President George W. Bush isn’t particularly concerned about securing our nations borders. Yes, Dubya is undeniably admirably tough on terrorism, but that the impact of that reality surely must be weakened by his far less admirably disinterest in securing the borders. This especially since the porous state of our borders is defended with the same arguments as the port deal: It’s good for business.
