by Matt Barr

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of ports

Have you heard? Ay-rabs gon' run our ports! Dubai Ports World acquired Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., a British outfit, and will now be in P&O's former positon to bid competitively on contracts to handle cargo coming off or loading on to ships in the six ports where P&O had contracts. (Which doesn't sound much like "running our ports," but the blogosphere gets so few opportunities to complain about things, so let it be.)

Eric Scheie has an eminently sensible question: He explains that the UAE, from whence comes Dubai Ports World, has been to some extent or another behind boycotts of Danish (and even Norwegian) goods as part of the Cartoon Jihad. "Should governments that sponsor boycotts of other countries in an attempt to control the editorial content of newspapers be put in charge of American ports?"

But you could ask, should governments that spy on their own citizens, outlaw gun ownership, promote "summary justice" dispensed by police officers and try to criminalize speech offensive to religion be in charge of our ports? Because one was, before P&O was sold to Dubai Ports.

I mean no disrespect to Great Britain (nor Eric, certainly), I mean only to point out that if we're to work only with those countries whose commitment to civil liberties is up to our own perceived standard, we're going to have to do a lot of stuff ourselves. If we want to limit our review of potential partners to free speech and press issues, we can certainly cross Austria off our list now, can't we?

Lest I leave the impression I don't understand why turning essential port management functions over to a Middle East-based outfit might be a bad idea, I have no patience with people accusing critics of this whole affair of racism. Bemusement at the administration's seeming underpreparedness for this reaction is perfectly understandable. Hell, as Stephen Green Will Collier notes, this reaction is perfectly understandable, so long as everybody (or, everybody we care to listen to) pulls back, like Green Collier does, to examine whether this is really a big fat hairy deal.

Finally, even if you get as squirmy as I do with teach-the-world-to-sing hand-holding multicurtural nonsense, any Senator or Congressperson prepared to try and derail this had really better think about what blocking an Arab company from some port management functions says to the wider world about our commitment to free markets, our allies and the stuff that really matters in the war on terror.

And the argument that if Jimmy Carter thinks it's a good idea it must not be, while clever, is unhelpful, too.

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