It is all about “us” vs. “them”
But the US in this question is "friends and relations of the B*sh junta", and the THEM is everybody else. So, when P&O sells out to the emirate of Dubai, it's not the jingo-media approved "our plucky British Friends selling out to those Swarthy Arabs™". No, it's actually "Stupid lapdogs helping to enrich friends of the family". And of course a deal like this will be sloppy enough so that if you're well connected, you can just stick out your hat and make a few more millions.
It's the same logic that had the CIA, which has an almost Israeli disregard for collateral damage, decide not to try to do a rocket attack on ObL a few years ago because ObL was visiting with the same good friends of the B*sh junta who are getting control of those ports. Because, you know, brown people are a dime a dozen, unless they are members of the family. I don't know why anyone is surprised at this; it's the way the Coward in Chief always works.
I expect the Evil Party "outrage" over the Dubai ports purchase will subside in the next few days when it becomes obvious that, despite Paul Weyrich's best efforts, same-sex marriage is still tolerated in Massachusetts.
(via Pen And Sword, Sisyphus Shrugged, and the Big Dog)
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Theoretically, it shouldn’t be a problem; the USA, as befitting a country that fetishizes the marketplace, shouldn’t care about who owns the docks, because the government would be providing the proper security, in the form of the customs police, to make sure that nobody smuggled anything nasty in through those docks.
But, alas, there’s no profit in that (just the same way that “due diligence” doesn’t have any profit in it; the government of Dubai could have no contacts with a certain flock of Wahhabi fundamentalists, but, hell, why spend the time actually verifying it when there is Money To Be Made for loyal B*sh cronies?) so it turns out that if you’re going to have any sort of security, it has to be the private police that the dockowners provide, and if you’re a badly-paid private policeman, there’s not very much profit in enforcing the rules that Customs and the DHH should be enforcing themselves.
And, as an aside, does anyone find it unsettling that the strain of barking lunatic Wahhabi fundamentalism that ObL preaches makes the (spit!) Taliban seem, in retrospect, to be somewhat moderate fundamentalists?
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The real problem with the port issue is not so much which private company gets the contract but why are we allowing any private company to run our ports. Ports, as a valuable part of our national infrastructure, should be run by public port authorities and union labor, as opposed to private, for profit companies and scab labor.