An Open Letter to the World about the Dubai Ports Deal

Dear Citizens of the World,

You should not be dismayed that American citizens revolted against the purchase of six of our largest ports by Dubai Ports World. Contrary to what some on the left and in the Bush administration would have you believe -- contrary to what your own instincts about nationalist, isolationist Americans would have you believe -- opposition to the deal was not about anti-Arab or anti-Muslim sentiment. Instead, it was fundamentally about many of the things that people across the globe have been decrying for at least a decade -- the unfettered power of moneyed elites, free trade and globalization being held up as goods in and of themselves, and effective and transparent government. And to be quite honest, yes, it was about national security.

Let's take the last objection first. Two of the hijackers who took down the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon in 2001 came from the United Arab Emirates. As much as the world has excoriated America for attacking Iraq, when it had nothing to do with 9/11, why now does the world think that the American people wouldn't take a dim view towards a nation whose people were involved? A.Q. Khan's nuclear proliferation network ran through the UAE. To be sure, the government there has sought to crack down on that network, but given the spotty record of the Bush administration, we should be forgiven for not taking this as total assurance. There are definitely remnants of the group who aided Khan still in the UAE, and who is to say that they could not, or have not, infiltrated DPW? Furthermore, the financial network that subsidizes Osama bin Laden runs through the UAE as a financial hub. It simply doesn't fly with most people to think that a nation whose people were intimately involved with both Al Qaeda and nuclear proliferation should run operations at the ports where security is already shoddy.

But, so many argue, the UAE is America's greatest new friend in the Middle East! Well, let's be clear on something -- the emirs who run the UAE are great friends of the Bush administration. That says nothing of how the masses of people in that nation feel about America. There has been a growing sense over the last 5 years that the Bush administration governs, not in the interest of all the people, but in the interests of a moneyed elite. Halliburton and, to a lesser extent, the Carlyle Group are words that conjure up images of BushCo cozying up to dictators while their people are angered by the hegemonic power of this country. They say they are working to clean up madrassas and modernize. Yet that means that in their country there is still great dissent against such a cozy relationship with the United States. And authoritarian rulers -- emirs -- cannot exactly grant the American people tough assurances that they have their people in check. So no, the elite-to-elite contact that is the strength of the USA-UAE strategic partnership is no comfort to us.

What's worse about the worldwide reaction to the scuttling of the ports deal is that it reflects a supposed consensus about the way that free trade and globalization proceed that is never evident in any other debate. No one on the left crowed about Bolivian nationalism when they decided that their water resources would not be privatized. We don't see anyone complaining about Venezuela nationalizing its oil resources. Indeed a large portion of the criticism of free trade over the last decade, beginning with NAFTA, was that it seemed that capital was becoming predominant over any other interests. Yet when Americans decide that critical infrastructure should remain in American hands, we're branded isolationists and protectionists. It's a dangerous and insulting double standard that plays into the hands of the corporate profiteers who benefit from unrestricted globalization. Leftists and socialists should take heart at the fact that Americans seek, on a visceral level, to control critical infrastructure in our country. It could be a model for other nations to follow. Instead it's used as another tool to bludgeon the arrogant American.

Finally, dissent over the ports deal is about effective and transparent government. When our President's first line of defense about the deal is, "Well, I didn't know about it in the first place," there's a serious problem in our government. Like it or not, in a country that has been a victim of a string of terrorist attacks over the last 13 years (stretching back to the first World Trade Center bombing), it's imperative that deals such as this are seriously scrutinized. It's not a game; let's not forget that this nation was attacked on 9/11/01. So people are demanding that a somnolent government wake up and protect us like they have been claiming they would do for the past four and a half years. And as poor as this deal looked, the people had to say "NO" to it.

Many commentators would have us believe that the scuttling of the Dubai Ports deal (which, by the way, isn't over yet -- what does it mean to "transfer control to an American entity"?) could have negative effects on various international business deals that American companies are working on. It's a sad day when willful misreadings of the sentiment of the American people could be used to punish us in such a way. Don't mistake the genuine concern of the American people for our safety for something so crude as anti-Arab sentiment. Contrary to popular belief, we're more complex than that.