With his every move, President Bush brings our nation closer to George Orwell’s prophetic vision of a negative utopia. On Feb. 21, Bush defended a deal his administration struck with United Arab Emirates, which is compromised of seven emirates located in the Middle East.
Bush’s deal allows UAE to purchase the rights to manage terminals in many U.S. ports, including ones in New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans.
Not surprisingly, many members of Congress are wary of letting this deal go through. They have noted that the UAE is known to have been the home base for terrorists.
This deal has not only raised the eyebrows of the Democrats, either. According to the Washington Post, Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) threatened to enact legislation to delay the deal.
Bush threatened to veto if Congress tried to kill it.
The craziest part of it all is that Bush is defending his decision by saying we shouldn’t be biased against an Arab company.
Well, no, we shouldn’t.
And in a perfect world (or under a different president), we probably wouldn’t be at war. But we are.
The UAE has a record of being an axis for terrorists. According to the New York Times, two of the hijackers involved in the 9-11 came from the UAE and they laundered some money through its banking system. It “was also the main transshipment point for Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear engineer who ran the world’s largest nuclear proliferation ring.” He is also thought to have aided in shipping nuclear extraction paraphernalia to Libya.
Since Sept. 11 Bush has been clouding our minds by swinging this war around, hauntingly familiar of the Ministry of Peace’s dealings with Eurasia and Eastasia. After 9-11, we Americans were told that Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida network were our enemies. In March 2003, we were bombarded with government propaganda and convinced that Iraq was now the enemy.
For almost five years we have been in a war against terrorism against countries in the Middle East, but all of a sudden our commander-in-chief strikes a deal with an organization known to aid terrorists?
What kind of scheme is he trying to pull off, right under our noses?
I clearly remember the last four words of 1984: “He loved Big Brother.”
Will we one day love him, too?

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