Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
‘On the Waterfront’
Your front-page editorial, while cleverly titled “On the Waterfront,” is all wet when it comes to explicating the motivations of those questioning the deal in which Dubai Ports World proposes to take over management of the Port of New York and New Jersey and five other ports in the United States [February 22, 2006].
Noting that many opponents of the deal have received political contributions from the International Longshoremen’s Association is interesting but fails to account for the near universal dismay in which this proposal has been viewed by a wide spectrum of elected officials.
Surely contributions from the ILA cannot account for the opposition of such disparate persons as Senator Clinton, Senator Schumer, Mayor Bloomberg, Senator Frist, Senator Coburn, Rep. Peter King, Governor Pataki, and Maryland’s governor, Bob Ehrlich.
What unites these officials – conservatives and liberals alike – is the common sense concern that our national security will be compromised by this change.
While port security may still be technically overseen by the Coast Guard and the Customs Service, as President Bush states, it is widely acknowledged that our ports remain perhaps our most vulnerable point of entry for terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.
To replace the British-owned firm that now manages operations at these ports with one based in the United Arab Emirates – a key place for recruiting and financing Islamist terrorists – would provide an irresistible conduit for Al Qaeda and other terrorists to defeat our inadequate port security.
Though I support the president’s general conduct of the Long War against Islamist terror, in this case, his interest in currying favor with fair-weather friends in Dubai and the other Emirates seems to have clouded his vision in protecting New York and these other vital ports.
His stubborn defense of Dubai Ports World is not unlike his tone-deaf nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, as some commentators have called it, “a classic second-term slipup.”
Let us hope that the president recovers his footing on this matter as quickly as he did on the Miers nomination.
ERIK PETER AXELSON
Manhattan
