How do you spell ‘Xenophobia’
That’s the word for today. Add “protectionist”, “reactionary”, and even “racist” to the list. There’s only one reason this deal got scuttled. The company that is attempting to purchase the terminals in 6 U.S. ports is based in the U.A.E. In case you were not already painfully aware, the ‘A’ stands for ‘Arab’, which we all know is a synonym for Muslim, which is a synonym for terrorist. The ‘American Street’ has spoken, and they’ve said “We don’t want no stinkin’ A-rabs runnin’ our ports”. The Representatives have decided that getting re-elected trumps good economic policy. As an added bonus, the Democrats get to appear to be to the right of the President on national security.
Now I’ll be perfectly frank here, and say that I am not terribly fond of Muslims. Haven’t been since that whole 1979 ordeal in Iran. That said, I’ve known individual Muslims that seemed, on the whole, to be normal, rational human beings. But as a group, I would prefer not to deal with them.
But the only reason I could come up with for not letting this deal go through was “Well, they’re Arabs.” And that didn’t sit well with me. The way I see it, these guys - Dubai Ports World - run a good number of terminals all over the planet. It’s logically inconsistent to deny them the ability to run terminals in the U.S. when they are already running the ones on the other end of the shipping transaction. And who the hell is dumb enough to pay 8+ billion dollars to buy a foothold on American soil, only to blow it up? Hell, if they really wanted to attack the ports, they could just load a bomb on to each ship that leaves their terminals elsewhere in the world, and do a hell of a lot of damage that way - and it would be cheaper.
I was once told by someone that I had “no faith in my fellow Americans” when I said that another terrorist attack on our land would unleash a demand from the American people to utterly obliterate Islam from the world. It seems that my lack of faith has been borne out.