Remember the phony stories after RWE bought KY American Water Co. that had evil Germans loading up their Benzes with our most precious resource and cackling triumphantly all the way back to Berlin?
Well, we are looking at the same nonsense on the issue of the six American ports being purchased by a company from the United Arab Emirates. Only now the politicians from both sides of the aisle are piling on the Bush administration.
Both parties screaming about this are wrong.
Arab ownership of U.S. ports is no more a threat than the end-of-the-world scenarios presented in the 1980's when Japanese investors were buying up New York real estate.
It is very simple. Terrorist infiltration of our ports won't be prevented by forcing American ownership. It is too easy to demagogue, so expect the issue to live on for a while, but this is much ado about nothing with regard to terrorism. It has a lot more to do with the value of foreign in-flows of capital. If we risk that, we face real self-inflicted harm. That is the greater danger here.
