Your prideful moral absolutism in admirable. Let me remind you of Soviet Lend/Lease in WW2. There is pretty good evidence that had not Roosevelt and Churchill been more pragmatic than you we’d all be speaking German or Japanese.

Taken to it’s logical conclusion, your moral absolutism would require our foregoing all Gulf and Venezulan oil. I suspect the result of such a decision would be extremely painful for you and your family as well as 300 million other Americans.

To paraphrase a great leader; tell them where we stand, where we want them to go, how far we’ll go to help them progress, and then we’ll offer some trust but we’ll verify.

You may want to consider how well those two decisions worked out. Seems to me won WW2 and the Long (lukewarm) War, Ver. 1.o by the judicious application of a little pragmatism.

I pride myself on not using names…my arguments suffice.

Pierre Legrand

The things you site are marginal imperfections that are not important in the over deal. We do business with The UAE – we have for years. QED your points are irrelevant. And I am labeling those who reacted out of irrational fear what they are. Notice that you have had to backed the troops dying in Iraq and then cowered when THEIR ally was all of a sudden in the news doing business here (as they have already).

What is terrible about what happened on the right is Chicken Hawk is the perfect label. These people are all full of bluster and bravado telling our soldiers to work side by side the Muslim Arabs and risk their lives, but we cannot handle a stock buy out because we are scared?

Pierre – the label hurts because we all know I am right. And there is no amount of rationalization that will change that. Your points were of a different nature, albeit I still disagree with them. But I do not see you as the type who would send someone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself if possible.

The troops are looking at this country and wondering what in the world did they all that fighting and dying for. And that is more important than any labels I use.

River Rat – thanks for the background. The more we learn the sadder this mess is.

Rober Stevens – the idiot who cannot discern Israel or India with a nuke and some mad mullah from Iran is no excuse for us to not be able to discern The UAW from Iran. To put it simple: just because Johnny has a labatomy does that mean you have to have one as well? (just kidding – I like to twist old sayings). The fact is we needed The UAE on our side and vague fear took over. We whimped out and it is ugly.

The CFIUS committee and the Administration was precluded by law from consulting with Congress until they had completed their review. Furthermore, as to tone-deafness, Dubai and Saudi owned companies have been operating both marine and airPORT terminals in the US for many years. As an indirect investor in P&O, I’ve been aware of this story since early November. I consider myself politically sensitive but, as I knew the majority of terminal operations were in the hands of foreign operators including Ayrabs, I had no clue of the coming firestorm. Obviously the entire Administration, at the Asst Secretary level, didn’t either. For gods’ sake, we’ve been selling the UAE F-16s for over 9 years. We’re supposed to be worried about a flocking stevedoring company with absentee falconeers as coupon-clippers?

The argument that access to port security and disaster recovery plans by DPW endangers national security is hollow. DPW is a global stevedoring company (aka marine terminal operator). They manage terminal operations world wide.

I have several close friends who have spent their careers in global inter-modal transportation. They tell me there is virtually no difference in port security and disaster recovery plans worldwide. If you know one you know them all.

What companies like DPW or the ocean carriers don’t have is access to our cargo tracking, intelligence, and risk assessment systems which are used to evaluate high risk cargo containers as well as bulk and break-bulk cargo.

This whole fiasco has little to do with national security. It did have an awful lot to do with the hubristic howling and cackling of Chicken Little’s cousins the chickenhawks and the cowardly collectivist clutch. Both flocks were running in circles in fear of falconeering camel jockeys. They still are.

A truly sad day for America and our attempt to defeat totalitarianism and construct a peaceful pluralistic planet. I believe this will be marked as a significant and possibly catastrophic setback in The Long War, Ver. 2.0. Only time will truly tell but I believe our chicken-herder-in-chief and his clutch had this one right.

Both chicken flocks flocked this one up. An avian pox on both their coops.

“Where is the history of states acquiring the bomb and then using it irrationally? History has consistently proven just the opposite, even with Islamist regimes like Pakistan and quasi-theocracies like Israel. This is just another example of the sad American tendency to demonize all potential foes as irrational. You take down a country on either side of Iran and they reach for the bomb: who’s being irrational or naive on that one?”

(See also Mark Safranski’s response)

Yes, connectedness is the key to defeating political Islam, but when a globalization big-thinker advocates nukes for Iran, can you really blame the Terrorism camp for its protectionist posture?

Your strawman arguments don’t carry any water with me. As far as I am concerned, people like you, Michelle Malkin, and Frank Gaffney did Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (the nascent Hitler over in Tehran) a great favor by placing America’s replationship with the UAE at risk. People like you have damaged our national security in my book. The UAE wasn’t perfect, but they were a darn good ally.

Thanks for nothin’.

The Strata-sphere lays it all on the line….

Furthermore which part of the President’s speech didnt you understand? We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest.

And in addition Cooper I am not against the deal because I want to stop anything from happening but because I took the President at his word. And yes there should be consequences for those who fund terror…especially terror that kills US Citizens.

Harold all you have to do is say that UAE does not boycott Israel, does not boycott Denmark and does not fund Hamas and PIJ. Your article on Strategypage carefully avoided those issues.

Pierre Legrand

The U.S. already does business with governments that fund terrorists that murder EVERYONE – not just US. If you want to stop them ALL from doing business in the U.S. then I expect you are prepared for the outcome of that? Because I can guarantee you that very few people in the U.S. are prepared for the financial collapse that would result.

“Do you sell the murderer of your family the bullets?”

If I work at a gunshop and a killer passed all U.S laws to purchase a gun and bullets from me, and then pumped my kid full of lead, I should close my shop and let the murderer win? And never sell another gun because all gun buyers look or think or act the same? Or is it only CERTAIN gun buyers? Should I just stop doing business with ANYONE that MIGHT be a MURDERER? Is that the same as stop selling Big Macs to grossly obese people because they MIGHT get FATTER?

I hope you don’t believe that taking this deal from the UAE and giving it to a U.S company is going to STOP something from happening?

United Airlines, American Airlines – they LET something happen – should they have closed up shop and gone away?

So you think that we should do business with governments that fund the very terrorists that murder us? And I am emotional? Exactly who won’t you do business with? Do you sell the murderer of your family the bullets?

So then I take it that no one disagrees that the UAE funds these terrorists? If so then I am sorry I ever said ok to the deal.

Pierre Legrand

I don’t think it is such a big deal. They’ve worked out some face-saving formula for everyone.

Notice Bush didn’t really bother to defend the UAE company.

It turns out that this company has been servicing our ships in the ME. I think they would have been fine, but now they will have some “American entity” running the port operations for the UAE.

This is a ridiculously emotional statement. The US economy will tank if ALL countries with ties to terrorism are barred from doing business in the US.

I presume you want the US to stop doing business with these countries abroad as well?

Or is it JUST those companies that are in – The Middle East that should be barred from doing business in the US?