Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Who Should Operate US Ports???

Is THIS good enough reason to oppose this sale? I mean if the worst foreign policy president of the 20th century likes it, it must be bad.

Seriously, I think Carter supports the sale, because opposing it would undercut his Camp David legacy, the only real foreign policy bright spot people remember.

There is a concern that no-one is yet talking about. What will the regional backlash be if the sale is halted by Congress or the President? Arab unification in demanding Middle East base closures? And we can't just say we don't want our ports operated by foreign interests, since the current owner operates out of Great Britain.

I don't think the fallout from this, if the sale is rewound, will help us in the WOT at all. But we'll see.

PS. The Bush administration must have known this would not sit well with the average American. This could be a gambit played by the Bush administration to try and fend off negative reaction by the UAE or other Middle East WOT partners. If Congress overturns the sale, Bush can show that he was for the sale, but was overruled by the people. And as for Bush? Well, he's not running for office, nor does he have a clear predecessor, as Clinton did with Gore. So he is not schackled to short term politics like others who will be running for office in the next few years. I think Bush is very much a long term strategist. The Iraq action and reshaping the mindset of the Middle East is a long term project. Compare that to the "capture Bin Laden" crowd. They make it sound like his capture or death equals the end of the War on Terror.