On further review I think this whole protest over the UAE port thing is the type of fear mongering racism that that made me hate the republican party. We are twisting the information and stirring up fear and hate for political points rather than real issues, and if we are a reality based community we need to admit it and move on to real issues worth impeaching this horrible president for.
Why below the cut.
Listen to this piece from
NPR's All Things Considered show I'm sure all of us will agree is not Fox News.
Everything is spelled out in this piece. Only one expert on port security has any concerns at all. The whole thing is a red herring.
It really hit it home for me was when he pointed out that every day airplanes fly into the United States from State Owned airlines from countries all over the world with the only security done on them provided by those State Owner Airlines. In other words, if all the UAE government owned buisness was corrupt full of terrorists, all someone would have to do was take one of the planes that fly into a building, and we would never look at the plane.
The workers are the same, the ships are the same, basically, the only major change in anything other than the name on the door are additions of additional oversight that is not ordinarily in place.
Now I agree our port security sucks, but that is another issue entirely, one I might add that was overlooked by America a few years back, that I'm proud to say my party tried to fight for. But the only reason this is getting play on the air is because Americans are afraid, and our fear has turned us into racists, and the politicians are using that, and while I'm not surprised by such things, I do still occasionally get disgusted.
The real issues don't play, because we don't care. The real issue of why any country should have this contract, be it UK or UAE is certainly something to discuss, but we all know the real issue is that America is afraid that brown people want to kill us, and so we don't want them to control our ports. And America, it is becoming a self fufilling prophesy as our racism is seen overseas and people start thinking if they are never going to be given a chance in a global economy, then why not blow the whole damn thing up and start over. That is what the terrorists are selling, and we keep feeding into it.
If you want to say it is bad because they aren't a democracy, fine. But are you willing to cutting every other contract with a third world monarch or dictator? Do we make the whole world Cuba, build the fence up, and see what happens?
You can't argue safety when the same people control planes that fly into every major city nearly every day with the only security provided by them assuring the plane is safe.
If this is what we have to do to win back the congress, that means the Newt and Karl Rove are right about America. We are such weak willed herd creatures. It's pathetic, and we are hypocrites.
This is a bad president, for so many other reasons. Impeachable reasons if only we had one house of congress to do investigations. But it digusts me the one issue that has stuck to teflon jr is wrong and racist.
I don't want to win like this.
UPDATE: For those not clicking on the link, the actual security of the ports is controlled by the Coast Guard (Physical Security of the port) and US Customs (Actual Cargo) and Dubai Ports world would only be contracted to have any involvement in security at 3 of the 6, and even at those three they would only be writing oversight recommendations for the Coast Guard and Customs...