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Dubai and America's ports |
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3/1/2006 8:36:36 AM |
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Your editorial, "Reaping what you sow" (Feb. 25) raises valid points about the Bush administration's response to concern over the Dubai Ports World initiative to manage port facilities in the United States. It is disappointing, however, that the editorial justifies concern by resorting to the argument that funds to finance the Sept. 11 attacks went through the United Arab Emirates.
While this is undoubtedly true, it is also a fact that terrorists entered the United States from Canada and that the would-be shoe-bomber boarded a plane in London. Why are Canada and Britain not similarly stigmatized?
U.S. intelligence services have not been entirely successful in their efforts to prevent terrorists from moving about the United States and cannot be expected to be 100 percent effective anywhere. From what I have observed in three years as a UAE resident, I have at least as much confidence in the security services here as I do in those at home in the United States.
Win Thompson Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Maureen Dowd ("Hands off America's ports," Views, Feb. 23) has aligned herself with the ignorant members of Congress who see a chance to score points at the expense of one of the few well-behaved regimes in the Arab world.
The government of the United Arab Emirates is a free-trading and tolerant regime in a difficult neighborhood that is trying to avoid the nationalistic and religious excesses found in neighboring countries.
So far the United Arab Emirates has played by America's rules, providing logistical support for American forces in the Gulf and closing down networks of finance for terrorist groups. Dowd's attitude encourages the beliefs of the extremist fringe in the Islamic world that the United States is not a partner to be trusted.
John Sabalis Dubai, United Arab Emirates
The surprising aspect of the port contract story is that the Bush administration didn't anticipate this kind of reaction and made no effort to defuse the potential bomb before it exploded.
Instead we're faced with accusations of racism and political infighting as well as another alienation of Congress by this administration. Most of this could have been avoided with more open communication and better planning.
Bob Ross, Sete, France
Regarding David Brooks's defense of the Dubai-based company receiving the ports contract ("Kicking Arabs in the teeth," Views, Feb. 24):
A distrust of this deal isn't "xenophobia." It's common sense. Would the United States have given such a contract to the Germans or Japanese a few years after Pearl Harbor? Sure, the port company in question used to be British, but we haven't been at war with Britain for centuries.
What Brooks and the Bush administration really champion is the power of big business.
Carol Hamilton, Pittsburgh
Civil war already
I find it odd that the talk is still focused on the struggle to prevent civil war ("Civil war in Iraq? Big threat to Mideast," Feb. 27). It reminds me of the unwarranted optimism I encountered in a headline in a different newspaper a few years ago that read: "Cease-fire holding, despite shooting."
Iraq is in a civil war now. Civil wars are not declared; they are by definition unstructured. There is no measure that can be used to define what threshold of violence must be overcome to make the assertion. But if people are dying and suffering and there is anarchy, we have a civil war.
Let's mention the unmentionable; the solution starts with confronting the problem. Simply ignoring it, or discussing various strategies that could be used to keep it from happening, won't help when it is already under way.
Andrew H.C. Schuh Thornhill, Ontario
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