Good can come from this exercise in Smoot-Hawley protectionism and ethnic and religious bigotry in two important ways: One, this tiny but strategically important nation will not abandon America in our war on terror. Sheikh Maktoum of Dubai, prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, said that while disappointed, his country wants continued good relations with the United States. His statement showed no anger, no threat of denial of their sea- and airports to the U.S. military, but continued friendship and cooperation in a part of the world where it's increasingly tough to be a friend of America. Secondly, now we can focus our attention on port security in every U.S. port from New York to Los Angeles and from Seattle to Miami.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Authority has done a good job of tightening airport security, but now Congress and the Department of Homeland Security should immediately mandate an independent investigation of all U.S. ports, our security practices at those ports and the identification of workers coming in and going out of our ports. Such an investigation would be a comprehensive threat and vulnerability assessment of our nation's port's security policies and procedures.
This would include auditing the security procedures in place governing the receipt, maintenance and transfer of containers (including the security integrity of whatever network/computer systems as used to maintain such data), as well as conducting background investigations into the port personnel and vendors dealing with critical areas and processes and companies involved in the shipping of containers from the point of origin to entrance into the port. We also need an immediate review of why the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States failed to elevate this issue to one of port security at all U.S. ports, not just the Eastern seaboard.
I'm a Thomas Friedman "World is Flat" fan, and while the world may not be totally flat now, it continues to flatten out as we speak. It's time for those who believe in global peace through global trade to come to the defense of economic and trade liberalization as the one sure way to political and social liberalization, i.e. democratic capitalism.
I sit on boards that do business all over the world, and I believe unambiguously that while the security of our homeland is our primary responsibility, the ultimate answer to security is the good that can come from the political liberalization that results from the education, economic and cultural understanding between people of all faiths on all continents in this 21st century.