It looks like the steam generated over the Dubai Ports World contract to manage terminals in six US ports has served as the obsequy for Dick Cheney, Harry Whittington, the hunting incident and the shot heard ‘round the beltway. It finally appears that the whole sorry affair and its affiliated industries may be finally chased from the pages of the New York Times by the grave incidents surrounding our ports ‘o call.
It now appears that the most prominent and prostrate advocates of appeasement since Neville Chamberlain, the major Democratic leaders in Congress, have decided to wet a finger, gauge the winds, draw a line in the sand at the lowest point of the low tide after carefully gauging the exact location of the moon and noting the time, and demand that Dubai Ports World - like the Gulf agency Company, another United Emirates Company which has successfully operated Houston's terminals for the past fifteen years - be rejected out of hand due to their sudden, presumptuous and nearly apoplectic fears for the common defense of our nation. Concerns generated, no doubt, by telephone calls and e-mails from Moveon.org, fawning members of the press sensing a breakthrough and affiliated members of the recently suppressed cartoon union.
This group of trenchant complainers, who have consistently fought and intemperately railed against President Bush about every valid attempt he has taken or tried to implement to bolster domestic security, from attacks on terror in afghanistan, the attempts to assist in the Philippines and other allies, the deployments of troops in Iraq, the types of weapons employed, the intelligence they approved, the generals selected to lead the operations, the nominations of the national command authority, the excessive response to 9/11, the temerity of the response to 9/11, the use of a volunteer army rather than employment of the draft, and the number of troops involved on the ground in any location, are now whipped into an absolute frenzy of fear because of a business contract.
The same Democrats who have used the media and their own forums in government to hobble the NSa and their attempts to overhear terror at work, to cast doubt on our leadership in their strident complaints about the body armor, to sow dissent in their collusion with their handmaidens in the written media, to construct the straw man of an imperial Presidency with their concern about the administration's use of secrecy in a time of war, to render aid and comfort to the enemy in their intemperate braying about what they perceive as torture and their open denigration of american troops, to extend legal protections to brigands, to attempt to fracture our allies in their belittling of the Coalition against terror, their pitiable prevarications and public lamentations about the state of the US army, among their more widely known adumbrations against our war efforts, are now turning their eagle eyes and their doughty acumen in business law and security to the port terminals and their operator.
and now, from the darkness of accommodation, the damp cold of withdrawal and the well worn paths of acceptable retreat in the face of plausibly deniable apparitions, Hillary Clinton has turned the greatest political sense since Richelieu and the greatest intellect since Newton on this matter of the ports, Chuck Schumer has brought the greatest playwriting talent available since Shakespeare and the keenest sense for blood in the water since Megalodon to the container industry, the indomitable and highly strung Harry Reid has dragged the most insightful knowledge of economics after John Maynard Keynes to this shameful and shabby affair, Senator Carl Levin has hauled his encyclopedic knowledge of the defense industry from David's sling powered stone to the phased pulsed ruby/argon laser to the problem, Jane Harman has dusted off every legislative handbook to be found in her office and has begun to write laws limiting this denouement, while Howard Dean has riveted the world and his own coterie of procumbent flatterers with his insightful assessments of the epicycles of world trade while citing the combined works of Parson Malthius.
and as the Democrats go to work casting aspersions on the contract and heaping revilement on the President for allowing an item of such base calumny to proceed with inadequate time for even further reproach, they will pull out all the stops in their quest for this Holy Grail and continue to parse the common sense of talk show hosts, trumpet every utterance of any economist and roadstead operator they can locate, ferry in incensed longshoremen to discuss contractual problems and their take on the alien and sedition acts, Englishmen who have gone mad in Dubai's noonday sun, crane operators who have seen unknown keffiyeh clad men running about unchecked in every port in america, send out General Wes Clark to dodge every direct question asked of him except for the softballs lobbed from liberal commentators, call for further investigations and a special prosecutor, demand immediate impeachment and revel in this latest scandal, which is to be exploited for all it's worth.
For the Democrats, who are now crying aloud in the their finest Nathan Hale impersonations - including tri-corn hats, ruffles and buckle shoes - the port and terminals caper is the most recent political fulcrum designed to wedge the open the secret door to power, national treasure and nothing more.
This sad single solitary attempt at bolstering our national security – the only such overt pursuit since 9/11 - has nothing to do with real concerns about us, only a means to ingratiate Democrats over something completely inconsequential. Over the years we have learned one thing for certain, if a situation is meaningless overseas, the Democrats will exhaust american military power and riches to involve us in it – and if it is shown to be equally without merit at home, they will expend whatever political will is necessary to roll us around in it for as long as possible.
If a contract to operate six shipping terminals is of such decisive and critical importance for the survival of our nation, what of a nuclear Iran, the ongoing cartoon wars, the consolidation of Hamas, the survival of al-Qaeda's triumvirate of evil, the porous border with Mexico, the recent uncovering of additional terror cells at home - the list goes on ad infinitum. But like it was during the late hunting accident, the missing quail stamp and single beer incident, all evidence of other worldly problems will vanish as this red hot potato subsumes everything else.
The leading Democrats, their liberal lackeys, and their utterly preposterous response to a simple contract to manage terminals and not the ports themselves, despite their protracted yammering to the contrary, resembles a pudding too rich to eat and a tawny port wine with a bouquet in which the slight sweet scent of ordure can be faintly, yet unmistakably, detected.
Change the contract and the company if we must, but remember that this boldly frenetic activity on behalf of the do-nothing-party has diddly squat to do with the safety and security of the United States and everything to do with the politics of fear and future political gain.
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