Ports Storm

Well, I'm going to jump right into the fire. If you've been paying attention there's been this huge debate about letting Dubai Ports World purchase operational control of some terminals at various Docks in this country. A large portion of the population seems to be of the mindset that this would put our national security at risk. Ok, let me ask this one simple question. Why would they invest 8 BILLION dollars in these operations and then allow it to be blown up?! I don't know of anyone that would be radical enough to do that! Besides that, we (actually our idiot Representatives and Senators) just blew a golden diplomatic opportunity. Which doesn't surprise me because of the fact that they are totally governed by how the political winds blow.

To what am I referring? Well, the chance to use the approval of the port operations purchase to get them (Dubai) to agree to change how they do somethings and gain access to much needed natural resources (OIL). If we had thought about it rather than just following the "conventional wisdom" We had the opportunity to lay out a laundry list of things that we wanted in order to grant approval. This could have been anywhere from recognizing Israel as a nation, or just even their right to exist (which they currently do neither), to permanent bases for our military and increased production of oil for us. It could have also been negotiated that a stand alone subsidiary, based and completely operated in this country be created to control these operations. None of this is possible now that Dubai has pulled out of this portion of the deal. Oh yes, this was only a small portion of the purchase. There were several other operations around the world that were included, and none of them seemed to have a problem with it, including one of our two closest allies, Great Britain. Diplomacy is what was needed here, but we went with reactionary, knee jerk isolationism, and dare I say from some a bit of discrimination based on where they are from.

Dubai is now right fully ticked. They are talking about having us leave their port and bases. With Iran less than 100 miles away from there across the Straits of Hormuse(sp?) we could end up being less secure than we are at present. We could also end up with a lower oil supply than we currently have. Neither of these 2 are good things! The other thing that no one seems to give any thought to is the loss of intelligence that we've been getting from Dubai. That easily could dry up now. It's my guess that we have things going on with them that are covert and cannot be revealed that are helping protect this country. Guess what folks?! These vital operations may now be gone. What we may have done is push them to deal more with folks like the Communist Chinese rather than us. All I can say to that is NICE GOING! Instead of having all sorts of opportunities militarily, politically, and economically at our disposal, we may now have none. We most definitely have FAR FEWER than we would have had! I do hope that this doesn't come back to bite us in the arse, but I have a sneeking suspicion that it's going to do just that!