Posted 3/3/2006
Port Deal: America's shabby treatment of imperfect allies has boomeranged in the past. Those who'd kick the UAE out of American ports should ponder what would happen if the U.S. Navy was kicked out of theirs.
There's a certain irony in former President Jimmy Carter's endorsement of the deal allowing Dubai Ports World, based in the United Arab Emirates, to take management of certain U.S. port facilities from a British firm, and a bitter lesson some Bush critics would do well to learn.
Before 1979, Iran was a staunch U.S. ally in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, as the UAE is in our war on terror. Then Carter, in the name of human rights, withdrew support for the Shah of Iran, leading to the anti-Western theocracy of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the current regime of the lunatic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is pursuing nuclear weapons to wipe Israel off the map.
Should we now kiss off the Emirates?
The UAE has a checkered past. It recognized the Taliban, for example. Al-Qaida has used its banks to launder money and two of the 9-11 hijackers called the UAE home. Well, Richard Reid, the infamous "shoe bomber" who tried to blow up an American Airlines Paris-to-Miami flight on Dec. 22, 2001, called Britain home.
The UAE has put itself on the line in the war on terror, which is more than can be said of some of our European "friends" whom we liberated twice and protected for six decades. When Winston Churchill was asked abut his alliance with Stalin, he famously replied that he would ally himself with Satan, if the devil was fighting Hitler.
U.S. Navy warships dock at its ports, with the UAE being the No. 2 international port for the Navy. Dubai Ports World has provided services for 700 U.S. Navy ships a year at the UAE ports of Jebel Ali and Fujairah.
The U.S. Air Force uses its airbases at Al Dhafra and Abu Dhabi. U-2 spy planes and Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft have been based there along with KC-10 aerial refueling planes.
Dubai Ports World is also the primary support contractor for U.S. Air Force assets at Al Dhafra.
Look at the nearby map. The UAE is the virtual epicenter of a region from Lebanon to India that contains both our greatest hopes and our greatest threats. As we pointed out the other day, it's no accident that Secretary of State Rice recently visited Lebanon on her way to the UAE, or that President Bush visited the world's largest democracy, India, to ink a historic strategic partnership. Or even the Pakistan of Pervez Musharraf, another less-than-perfect ally.
We're fighting a pivotal war in Iraq. We face an imminent and possibly nuclear threat from Iran, whose leaders recently threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz through which 20% of the world's daily oil production passes.
The UAE is an invaluable strategic asset in a region where democracy is struggling to be reborn in Lebanon, flourish in Afghanistan and take root in Iraq, a region under attack from thuggish regimes in Syria and Iran, and terrorists groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and even a resurgent Taliban.
It's also ironic that this controversy continues as the Senate voted, finally, to renew the Patriot Act. Democrats' sudden concern for national security stands in stark contrast to their constant criticism of and opposition to this valuable and unquestionably successful anti-terrorism tool and and their opposition to warrantless surveillance of terrorists and their U.S. contacts.
We have expressed certain reservations about the port deal in the past. But in the war on terror we need all the friends we can get, particularly a nation strategically situated between a struggling Iraqi democracy and a mushrooming Iranian threat. President Bush once said either you are with us or against us. The UAE is with us.
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