OPPOSING UAE PORTS DEAL NOT ANTI-ARAB BIGOTRY

by Joe Conason

How fortunate that the opinion pages of our mightiest newspapers are open to diverse viewpoints. We would otherwise miss the opportunity to learn from liberal, conservative and centrist pundits alike that opponents of the Dubai ports deal -- which now include about 70 percent of the American public -- must be crazed, racist and xenophobic.

One original thinker after another insists that there can be no honest criticism of the Dubai deal. They tell us that every critic, no matter how measured, is a protectionist bigot; and that every argument, no matter how rational, is a calumny against Arabs and Muslims. There is a strange whiff of demagogy in these screeds.

In The New York Times, David Brooks laments America's sudden inundation by "a xenophobic tsunami." That newspaper's Thomas L. Friedman warns us against "global ethnic profiling." And Nicholas Kristof huffily declares in its pages that "this fuss about ports is really about Arabs." Brooks proclaims that any concern about potential security problems is "completely bogus," while Friedman describes such concerns as not only "bogus" but "borderline racist." Kristof refers slyly to "the arguments of those who believe we should discriminate against Arabs."

The same ugly insinuations are parroted on the pages of The Washington Post, where dissent from the Dubai deal is dismissed as simply "racist."

Such is the conventional wisdom, which blesses all trade as "free trade" and venerates corporate globalization as the one true faith. To question those assumptions, even in the name of national security, is considered a sign of benighted partisanship, economic ignorance or worse.

Suddenly all these literary worthies have acquired profound knowledge of our ports. With breathtaking arrogance, they claim to know what will make us safe and what might endanger us. We're told not to worry about the takeover of several ports by the government of Dubai, because "the U.S. Coast Guard still controls all aspects of port security, entry and exits; the U.S. Customs Service is still in charge of inspecting the containers, and U.S. longshoremen still handle the cargos." We're assured that "nearly every expert who knows something about port security" agrees.

On this issue, the mainstream pundits don't condescend to engage in serious debate. They gush over Dubai's luxury hotels and skyscrapers, without mentioning the utter absence of democracy, transparency and human rights. They praise the United Arab Emirates for behaving like an ally against al Qaeda, while ignoring its recent connections with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. They seem to think that if any foreign firm is allowed to operate an American port, then a company that is wholly owned by a foreign dictatorship must be treated the same way.

If none of that makes sense to you, then you're obviously a bigoted protectionist. Remember that for most if not all critics of the Dubai Ports World takeover, the most troubling issue is the Bush administration's casual approach to vetting the deal. The more we learn about this process, the less confidence we feel. To doubt this government's competence is neither xenophobic nor racist.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency body overseen by the Treasury Department, appears to have performed poorly here. Sadly, that is unsurprising, as the Government Accountability Office pointed out last fall. Like the conventional minds of the newspaper world, Treasury officials tend to value "free trade" above all other considerations, including national security. That is why the G.A.O. has been urging tighter and tougher methods for evaluating foreign investment in critical infrastructure and defense sectors.

As for expertise, the collected knowledge of the nation's newspaper columnists on this subject is considerably less than that of the actual experts who have questioned the deal.

The pundits certainly know less about port security than Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, who currently directs the Homeland Security Initiative for the Aspen Institute, an impeccably moderate and nonpartisan research center. He recently confessed his doubts in The New York Times (where certain columnists might have read him).

The pundits also know considerably less than Joseph King, the former Customs Service special agent in charge of counterterrorism for that agency until 2003. They know less than the Coast Guard officers who turn out to have warned the Committee on Foreign Investment of the "intelligence gap" in the Dubai deal.

Those men have exercised actual responsibility for ensuring the security of our ports. So let the columnists hiss and fulminate -- and let the investigation proceed, with due caution.