Any action that Congress takes with near unanimity is presumptively foolish. The presumption can be overcome, as with the renewal of the Patriot Act, though in that case the foolishness peeks through in a number of provisions that reflect bureaucratic wish lists rather than genuine evaluation of the best response to the terrorist threat. (One of the best reasons for pressing forward to win the War on Terror quickly is so that we can repeal the laws the were needed to win it.)
The House Appropriations Committee’s vote to kill the Dubai Ports World deal – 62–2 with only jolly free trader Jim Kolbe and Beltway oddity James Moran opposed – displays near unanimity without any redeeming security value. It’s unarguable that the Bush Administration’s tardy effort to calm critics has failed utterly. That is no feather in the cap of either the White House or the Congresscritters. Edmund Burke said, “Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” By that standard, today’s Representatives owe a great deal that they have not paid.
Still, we have this lemon. What can be done with it?
The position that DPW cannot safely be permitted to operate terminals in U.S. ports implies four premises about public safety in wartime.
1. Religion, ethnicity and associations with terrorists raise strong suspicions about one’s loyalty to the cause of civilization in the War on Terror. The principal charge against the government of Dubai is that it was (like almost all other Middle Eastern governments) complaisant about al-Qa’eda before 9/11 and maintains indirect and attenuated links to this day. (The crown prince is also a big fan of Bill Clinton, but we won’t hold that against his country.)
2. The burden of dispelling suspicion lies on the suspect, not the accusers. In this case, Dubai could not carry its burden by furnishing a major base to American armed forces and cooperating from the beginning in the Container Security Initiative, which shows just how heavily the presumption of guilt weighs against the accused.
3. Unless refuted (and there may be little opportunity for refutation; vide the next point), suspicion justifies interference with normal expectations of fair treatment. In peacetime, no one would defend taking longstanding commercial operations out of Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s hands, at considerable cost to the company, simply because a new owner could not prove its bona fides beyond a reasonable doubt. During a war, the risk of harming innocent parties receives much less weight.
4. Similarly, procedural regularity is at a discount. The Appropriations Committee has taken action before completion of administrative review and shows no interest in what that process might reveal.
Though I believe that they are being misapplied in this instance, those principles do not seem unreasonable when we are fighting enemies who routinely violate the laws of war and depend primarily on murdering civilians and destroying private property to gain their ends. Right-wing opponents of the deal assuredly agree. By joining in the outcry against DPW, indeed rushing to the vanguard, leading Democrats have acquiesced in that logic. Or are they going to tell us afterwards that they were merely doing the bidding of the International Longshoremen’s Association? (BTW, terrorists who want to infiltrate our ports can do so more cheaply and effectively by spreading money around the notoriously corrupt ILA than by purchasing British shipping lines at a premium over market capitalization.)
The DPW principles shed light on many war-related controversies. The NSA’s warrantless wiretaps are an excellent example. Contact with al-Qa’eda certainly raises suspicions that furnish good grounds for ignoring expectations of privacy and due process. Somebody in this country may have innocent reasons for telephoning or e-mailing known terrorists, but that possibility is a lot less substantial than the likelihood that the government of Dubai is sincere about assisting in the War on Terror.
Maybe Hillary Clinton et al. will pursue the corollaries of their reasoning on this issue. If they don’t, we will have firm proof that their approach to national security is fundamentally frivolous.
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