Dubai Ports World mess hurts the Presidency

I honestly feel this way. I think the Bush presidency has been dealt a mortal blow and might not recover. It shows that even when Bush wants to reward a loyal ally of the War on Terror he was let down by his own party.

It is true he wasn't able to articulate this thing in such a way that the American people weren't scared that the evil-Dubai Aaarabs were putting bombs into every shipping container coming into Newark. They couldn't get the hint through that this company was simply going to control everyday operations and we were still on security detail. Also doing all the dealing in such secrecy did not help matters as well.

However he wasn't able to control his party well enough to ask them to wait until they could at least study the deal before they rushed to block it. I mean the White House said that they had the thing fully vetted and free of security holes. Still Repubs in Congress rushed to block the thing when poll numbers turned against them. In other words even Bushes own party does not trust him enough to do their own due diligence.

Also Bush looks like a chump to the moderate Arab world. He tried to stand up and show that the US doesn't just take their oil, bomb their homes, and sneak out the backdoor when things get dicey. We can actually trust the Arabs to run a few of our ports like we trust them to protect our warships docked in their ports. Or when we need to trust them when we are working with them to go after Al-Quida.

Instead Bush is met with anti-Arab sentiment and stiff-necked protectionism when it comes to our so-called Arab friends. How can they trust us when we look down our noses at them and dub them as untrustworthy without even checking them out. We even accused them of having Al-Quida sympathizers or even agents hiding in the Dubai Ports World company and perhaps many others. I would hate being called a terrorist sympathizer if I was a moderate Arab country.

Would this have even been an issue if that Oriental Steamship Navigation company was bought out by a Brazilian or a Dutch concern? It would have been a footnote in the business press and nothing more. But when a moderate Arab company gets the contract we do everything we can to block them even after the White House has studied the security angle and given them the green light. I guess Bush has officially entered the lame-duck period with 2 full years to go in his term. Let's hope his foreign policy agenda hasn't been dealt a mortal blow as well.