The UAE tunes, they are a'changing.....

Mata Musing

I've been watching the change of approach. It started with "we can't have an Arab company buying US ports!". Now, as the truth and details of reality come up, the opposition - most especially Congress - is changing the lyrics to "we just haven't seen a complete due diligence report".

Michelle Malkin is humming along on this same trend with her "No More Business As Usual" thread. And in this case, the chorus is citing an investigation period that took 20 to 25 days instead of the allotted 45.

To this, I would ask... if you've been doing business with an entity for quite a while now, and they have a documented track record that is stellar, why would it take all of the 45 days? It's not like DP World was an unknown business to CFIUS.

Dissenters, trying to debunk the obvious impression of anti-Arabic prejudice in the port deal, are insisting that their opposition is because the company is owned by the UAE gov't... as many (or all) of their transit and technology firms are. Quite frankly, this argument's sensibilities escape me.

Corruption in private corporations is a harder bird to keep tabs on, with less recourse on the international scene. Especially in an industry where so few are qualified for port operations of this magnitude. Truth is, I firmly believe there are more avenues to pursue if the UAE demonstrated absolute gov't corruption in their handling of the ports. Afterall, this is in an industry that affects most of the trading nations of the world. And for the UAE to sustain it's economic growth, they have no reason to alienate the rest of the free market world. Personally, in this case, I think it's a plus.

But I'm willing to hear why the UAE gov't is a risk. It's not like dealing with the Iranian gov't. But I sure don't want the old "this terrorist came thru, and that terrorist had a bank account there" BS coming down. We can say the same for ourselves, Britain and every other nation. Human cockroaches are everywhere.