After reading and listening to huge amounts of debate on the UAE port deal, I’ve decided that although I am definitely not a supporter of the deal, I’m cautiously OK with it provided there is strict security supervision of the operations of DP World.

(And I’m singularly unimpressed with those who call the people questioning this deal, “Islamophobic and un-American.”)

The most persuasive argument in favor (for me, anyway) is that if a terrorist group wanted to attack through the ports, there are many less risky ways to do it than by infiltrating the company that schedules port operations. The best argument against is that it makes no sense to increase the risk factor, even incrementally, and the potential exists that an Islamist employee could share information with bad guys.

But those who say the UAE is an unmitigated ally of the United States are being naïve; you don’t have to go very far from the glittering high-tech business centers to find the same kind of radical Islam in the United Arab Emirates that breeds in Saudi Arabia. Human Events Online has a piece by Terence P. Jeffrey that shows just one example: Did UAE Save Bin Laden?

UPDATE at 2/24/06 5:32:05 pm:

Another reason why I’m still uneasy about this deal; on March 26, 2004, our Outrage of the Day was about the appointment of former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi to the Columbia University Edward Said Chair—a chair that is funded principally by the United Arab Emirates.

UPDATE at 2/24/06 5:42:44 pm:

Charles Krauthammer’s op-ed today expresses many of the same misgivings: A Dubai Finesse.

Democrats loudly denounce any thought of racial profiling. But when that same Arab, attired in business suit and MBA, and with a good record of running ports in 15 countries, buys P&O, Democrats howl at the very idea of allowing Arabs to run our ports. (Republicans are howling, too, but they don’t grandstand on the issue of racial profiling.)

On this, the Democrats are rank hypocrites. But even hypocrites can be right. There is a problem. And the problem is not just the obvious one that an Arab-run company, heavily staffed with Arab employees, is more likely to be infiltrated by terrorists who might want to smuggle an awful weapon into our ports. But that would probably require some cooperation from the operating company. And neither the company nor the government of the UAE, which has been pro-American and a reasonably good ally in the war on terrorism, has any such record.

The greater and more immediate danger is that as soon as the Dubai company takes over operations, it will necessarily become privy to information about security provisions at crucial U.S. ports. That would mean a transfer of information about our security operations — and perhaps even worse, about the holes in our security operations — to a company in an Arab state in which there might be employees who, for reasons of corruption or ideology, would pass this invaluable knowledge on to al-Qaeda types.

That is the danger, and it is a risk, probably an unnecessary one. It’s not quite the end of the world that Democratic and Republican critics have portrayed it to be. After all, the UAE, which is run by a friendly regime, manages ports in other countries without any such incidents. Employees in other countries could leak or betray us just as easily. The issue, however, is that they are statistically more likely to be found in the UAE than, for example, in Britain.