What I Think About the Dubai Port Deal

I've been getting some emails asking what I think about the Dubai port deal. I haven't written anything about this issue until now primarily because I'm more amused by it than outraged or concerned. Based on what I've read, the deal itself doesn't really bother me. Perhaps not all the proper bureaucratic steps were followed, and I suppose that's worthy of some criticism, but I doubt very much that transferring operation of certain ports to a Dubai-based company makes our port system any more vulnerable to terrorist infiltration than it already is. The way I understand it, it doesn't so much matter who manages the ports. The ports will still be staffed by American (mostly union) labor and port security will still be handled by U.S. Customs, the Coast Guard, and the various state and local port authorities. And other foreign countries, such as China, already manage operations at a number our biggest ports. Apparently this Dubai-based company already operates a number of ports in Great Britain and other Western countries, and those countries don't seem to be terribly worried about it. The outrage over this deal, therefore, seems to be more than a little overblown.

Like Dan Froomkin, though, I find it more than a little amusing that Bush finds himself in this position. As Froomkin explains:

He stands accused of being weak on national
security, insufficiently fearful of terrorism,
and out of touch with the American public.
And he's operating in a political climate
where nuance and details make a poor
defense.

It's like that twilight zone where the obnoxious anti-Semitic guy walks out of a bar and suddenly finds himself as a Jew in Nazi Germany. Maybe Bush now has a better understanding of what John Kerry, Max Cleland and others have gone through. The Rove recipe for political success over the last four years has been to scare the hell out of people while vastly oversimplifying national security issues and totally distorting the positions of even the administration's most reasonable critics. Bush has no one but himself to blame for the political predicament he finds himself in at the moment.

But as Glenn Greenwald points out, this raises an interesting ethical dilemma for many Democrats and liberals:

The issue is this: Republicans have spent the
last five years cynically exploiting every issue
they can find, particularly ones involving
national security and terrorism threats, for
domestic political gain, and it hardly requires
any guessing to know that they will escalate
those deceitful efforts heading into the
mid-term elections this year. Karl Rove has
all but said so.

Operating from the premise that this
Administration poses a genuine and profound
danger to our constitutional principles and is
poised to do long-lasting, perhaps irreparable,
damage to our country -- a proposition to
which I certainly subscribe -- what limits, if
any, ought there to be on efforts and strategies
to politically defeat Bush and his followers?

If Democrats have an opportunity to inflict
serious political harm on the Administration
and its enablers in Congress through a scandal
which may not be truly meritorious but can
be a potent political weapon . . . ought
Democrats do what Bush followers have done
for the last 5 years -- namely, use whatever
instruments they can to politically harm the
Administration, even if there is some cynicism
involved in doing so -- or ought they maintain
higher and more intellectually honest
standards and forego political gain if it means
cynically exploiting a scandal?

This is the classic "do the ends justify the means" ethical question. As I've observed before, I think liberals tend to be more reluctant than conservatives to answer this question in the affirmative. I think that, at least in the aggregate, liberals are less comfortable using disingenuous arguments to achieve the political ends they seek, no matter how righteous they believe those ends to be. I know that's true of myself. I realize I'm massively generalizing here and that there are many exceptions to this rule on both sides, but I think there really is a noticeable difference between liberals and conservatives in this regard (again, in the aggregate). For instance, there is little doubt in my mind that this port issue presents liberals with an easy way to score political points by simultaneously undermining the President, splitting conservatives, and presenting themselves as strong on national security. Nevertheless, if you do a quick survey of liberal pundits, commentators, and bloggers, you'll see that quite a few are either reluctant to join the fray or have actually defended the port deal (see, e.g., Jimmy Carter, Kevin Drum, Faiz of Think Progress). Many other liberals and Democrats have criticized the deal in a sort of half-hearted way, drawing attention to the cronyism angle or the lack of adequate scrutiny, but stopping well short of saying that Dubai, by virtue of being an Arab nation, should be prevented from owning these ports. If this situation were reversed, and this deal had been approved by a Democratic administration, I am virtually certain that the chorus of conservative outrage would be deafening and nearly totally in unison. Regardless of the merits of the deal itself, Republicans would play the jingoism card to full effect and would relentlessly hammer Democrats politically.

For whatever reason, conservatives seems more willing to embrace arguments they don't truly believe if it serves the greater good, i.e, it advances conservative interests generally. Put another way, conservatives are more likely than liberals to be guided primarily by utilitarian or consequentialist ethical principles. Conversely, liberals are more likely than conservatives to be guided by deontological ethical principles, i.e., the belief that certain means or methods are intrinsically wrong, no matter how good the ends are they would help to bring about. This, more than anything else, may explain why liberals and Democrats are routinely out politicked by their conservative opponents.

But even if you don't buy any of this and consider yourself a pure utilitarian liberal, there are reasons not to get carried away in criticizing this port deal. As Kevin Drum explains:

If jumping on the Dubai hysteria bandwagon
merely hurt George Bush politically and
prompted some additional interest in port
security, I'd be all for it. What do I care if
the DPW/P&O deal goes through? But the
whole thing feeds on a mindless anti-Arab
jingoism that's genuinely dangerous, and
that's why I'm not joining the fun unless I
hear some really good reasons for doing so.
As liberals, we're either serious about
engaging with the Muslim world in a sensible,
non-hysterical way or we're not. Which is it?

I tend to agree.

Disclaimer: Before you start sending me links to liberals and Democrats who are getting all worked up about this deal, let me be clear. I'm am not claiming that all or even most liberals are so intellectually honest that they never engage in disingenuous or opportunistic arguments to score political points. Of course that's not true. I realize that many liberals have loudly criticized this deal, some of whom are genuinely concerned and others who are just trying to score points at the White House's expense. My point, though, is that a surprising number of liberals have refused to join the fray and to capitalize on this political gift, this piece of low-lying fruit. And the reason they can't do it is because they can't bring themselves to advance arguments and talking points that they don't genuinely believe. My strong suspicion is that if this situation were reversed, very few conservatives would have similar qualms about sticking it to their Democratic opponents. Obviously I cannot prove this empirically (it's a counter-factual hypothetical after all), but that's my sense of things based on my own experience. For what it's worth.