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The facts about the ports deal

February 23, 2006 | By Nathaniel Ward


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Security at America's ports will probably not change under new ownership, but Congress should still review the purchase to ensure it provides for American security.

As I noted on Tuesday, there is a growing debate over whether or not the government should allow a company from United Arab Emirates to operate six of America’s largest ports.  Critics of the deal, including many members of Congress, argue that the government should block the deal entirely, since the Arab country could pose a security threat.

But the facts don't support such a drastic move, Heritage homeland security experts James Carafano and Alane Kochems explain. Instead, they suggest that Congress should examine the deal to ensure the company has been properly vetted for security.

“The country needs confidence in the procedures meant to ensure that foreign investment does not harm national security and this reasonable delay for review is the way to provide it,” they write. Critics’ concerns “do reflect the importance of ensuring that the system created by Congress to review the sale of foreign investments in the United States is functioning properly.”

Carafano and Kochems explain several important facts in their new paper:

  • Outsourcing port operation is nothing new. In fact, the ports in question are currently owned by a British company, and much of our economy depends on foreign companies for transportation.
  • Security procedures, based on post-9/11 security changes, will remain unchanged. The Coast Guard and U.S. Customs provide security at American ports—not the port’s owners.
  • Dubai World Ports does not pose a security risk. It is a holding company only, and its executives would have no access to security information or procedures. Furthermore, since the company wants to make money, it is not in its interests to allow terrorists to use its facilities.
  • The UAE is a close ally in the war on terrorism, having turned over several al Qaeda suspects to the United States. It also participates in America’s overseas container screening program.

In an interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation yesterday, Carafano elaborated on several of these points. He noted that terrorists, drug smugglers and other criminals already exploit our transportation networks without the complicity of the companies involved. Furthermore, he said such groups would not want to be involved with such companies, since that could attract unwanted attention, just as this deal has.

Regardless of who operates U.S. ports, it is neither physically nor economically feasible to turn each one into a “miniature Fort Knox,” Alane Kochems wrote last year. Domestic ports are only one facet of maritime security. A more comprehensive solution would include a transparent, global supply-chain security framework that better integrates commercial information and intelligence.

How to win the long war

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, speaking today at The Heritage Foundation, laid out a four-part plan to defeat the terrorists and win the long war:

  1. Establish an inter-agency network, coordinating intelligence and military operations, to counter the terrorists’ distributed network of operations. America must fight “with all the elements of national power” to break the enemy, and we must recognize that simply decapitating the organization will not cripple it.
  2. Work with the people of the Middle East to remind them that their own countries and ideals are being threatened by radicals—not by the United States and its allies.
  3. Deny safe-haven to terrorists as they are driven out of Iraq and Afghanistan by working to shore up regimes in the area to ensure that governments remain strong and retain close ties to America
  4. Re-posture the military for the long war. “The worst possible model would be to garrison the Middle East in the way we garrisoned Europe after World War II,” he said. To effectively fight terrorism, the military needs to be more agile and better able to respond quickly to events.

This terrorist enemy, he said, “shows no moderation” and its repeated bold strikes show it is “more than a radical fringe element.” Nevertheless, he said he “remain[s] enormously confident we will succeed in this endeavor.”

Answering a question about yesterday’s terrible attack on the Shiite “Golden Mosque” in Samarra, Kimmitt also touched on the recent sectarian violence in Iraq. The attack was a “terrorist attempt to try and incite civil war,” he said, and it shows the sort of calculated efforts to spark a civil war usually associated with al Qaeda thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. “It is tense inside the country right now,” he warned, though he does not believe civil war is coming.

Kimmitt, the Deputy Director for Plans and Policy at the U.S. Central Command, spoke before dozens of journalists and Heritage members in Heritage’s Allison Auditorium.

Scholar reads Constitution text; liberals appalled

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Former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, right, and Heritage Reagan Fellow Ed Meese discuss the President's wartime powers .

The Constitution and more than 200 years of tradition give the President broad powers to conduct military operations without formal Congressional approval, former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo said Wednesday at The Heritage Foundation.

Yoo used both the text and the structure of the Constitution to demonstrate that the Founders intended to give the President alone the power to make war and engage the enemy. He admitted, though, that Congress can check these war powers since it controls military funding.

Of course, Yoo’s use of the Constitution’s text bothered liberals who don’t believe the Founders meant what they said or don’t believe what they said is relevant. Several liberal hecklers in the crowd made their views known, and Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote a column attacking his speech.

In other news

Coming up at Heritage

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Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.