What the ports controversy says about Washington’s “war on terror”

[IndianaGreen]

What the ports controversy says about Washington’s “war on terror”

By Patrick Martin
25 February 2006

The political uproar in Washington over the sale of cargo facilities in six US ports to an Arab-owned company has exposed the cynicism of the Bush administration’s so-called “war on terror” and its claim that military aggression abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home are aimed at protecting the American people from new terrorist attacks like those of September 11, 2001.

Bush has used the “war on terror” as an all-purpose pretext to justify actions ranging from the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to the passage of the USA Patriot Act and the illegal NSA program of warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans. But the administration is now finding it difficult to square its propaganda of the past four years, calculated to stoke up fear of terrorism for political purposes, with its decision to approve the transfer of port facilities in New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans to the control of Dubai Ports World (DPW), a state-owned firm based in the United Arab Emirates.

Leading Democrats have seized on the issue in an attempt to outflank the administration on national security issues from the right, and they have been joined by sections of congressional Republicans. In both parties, the controversy is being exploited to whip up chauvinist and anti-Arab sentiment. Predictably, the trade union bureaucracy, led by the Teamsters and the International Longshoremen’s Association, has enlisted its services in this reactionary campaign.

All of these administration critics evade and seek to obscure the legitimate political issues raised by the administration’s sanction, without any public discussion or congressional review, of the sale of the port facilities.

There is an obvious double standard at work: American citizens are to give up such fundamental rights as habeas corpus in favor of unchecked executive powers to arrest, imprison and even torture anyone designated by the president as an “enemy combatant.” Giant transnational corporations, however, lose none of their freedom of action. Their decisions, even on such a sensitive issue as the control of US port facilities, are routinely rubberstamped by the Bush administration.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/port-f25.shtml

[AX10]

1. wsws.org has no credibility.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[AX10]

5. WSWS has lumped we Democrats with in with the xenophobe...

crowd.

"Leading Democrats have seized on the issue in an attempt to outflank the administration on national security issues from the right, and they have been joined by sections of congressional Republicans. In both parties, the controversy is being exploited to whip up chauvinist and anti-Arab sentiment. Predictably, the trade union bureaucracy, led by the Teamsters and the International Longshoremen’s Association, has enlisted its services in this reactionary campaign."

[IndianaGreen]

6. Correctly so, it appears!

We wouldn't be in Iraq if not for the Democrats that heeded the DLC's call to join Bush in his holy crusade.

Schumer is a xenophobe!

[CJCRANE]

3. “The administration cannot have it both ways.

Either the terrorist threat is real, in which case we need to zip up America, run our own ports and restrict investments in critical infrastructure to our longtime allies. Or bin Laden is a bogeyman, useful for achieving a level of domestic control long held in check by the protections for civil liberties and privacy inherent in the American Constitution, but definitely in the way when it comes to attracting investment from Arab countries flush with oil money.”

[Maine-ah]

4. "Arab-owned company"

this is the problem that I have with most news casts and other stories out there and that is the fact that no one is pointing to the fact that it's a UAE GOVERNMENT owned company, not just UAE based.