Final thoughts (I hope) on the Port Deal

I was driving along today and decided to tune in to Rush Limbaugh. I figured that since the Dubai port deal had fallen through he would be on to something else. I was wrong. He had a caller, one of his sycophants by the sound of him, saying that since the port deal had been killed by congressional/public objections that must mean that all forms of race based discrimination were now legally OK. Rush immediately agreed saying that there was just no way to tell where this could lead.

OK, so denying a nation which was involved in the 9/11 attacks control of major ports of entry into the US is EXACTLY THE SAME as “colored only” drinking fountains and “No Irish Need Apply” signs and “restricted”, no Jews welcome, country clubs?

Sean Hannity coined the term “sanctimonious talking point Republicans” to describe the chorus of Republican kool-aid drinkers who rushed out to defend the Deal. The tactics used by this crew were nearly identical to the ones employed to attack the critics of Harriet Meiers. Refuse to engage the substantive arguments of your opponents and instead accuse them of various low motives. In the Meiers case it was sexism and elitism. In the Dubai matter it is racism and xenophobia.

We are told that Dubai is a cosmopolitan place with high rise hotels by the sea and great restaurants. There are really cool upscale jewelry stores where you can get solid platinum Rolex watches crusted with diamonds. The UAE is said to be building a Hong Kong style bastion of laissez-faire capitalism in the heart of the Islamic Middle East. And they have call girls in every color of the rainbow too.

But let us tear ourselves away from the smoking-hot Dubai club scene and contemplate something else; the cockpit of hijacked United Airlines flight 175 a few seconds before crashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The hijackers, two of whom were from the UAE, begin shouting “Allah Akbar” as they had been trained to do, so that they might die with praise to their “god” on their lips. Where on earth would these men get the idea that God might want them to throw their lives away in an appalling act of evil? I know exactly where they came across that idea. In a Wahhabi mosque.

Wahhabism is a virulent form of fundamental Islam that has been stripped of nearly everything that could be considered redeeming. Fulminating with hatred for any Christian, Jew, secularist or non-Wahhabi Muslim (especially them) Wahhabism is the brand of Islam embraced by the UAE. Strip away the yacht clubs and the indoor ski slope and you have an eighth century tribal kingdom using the trappings of modern secular technological society to advance a philosophy whose ultimate goal is the destruction of modern secular technological society.

They did, after all, allow their banking system to be the money laundry for Osama bin Laden. They did, after all, allow their excellently run ports to be the transshipment point for nuclear technology on its way to rogue states Iran and North Korea. They were, after all, the first nation to recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan and the last to withdraw that recognition. Of course when you point this out to any of the Deal defenders, especially the Libertarian ones, they start talking real fast about how beautiful the Dubai skyline is and how they have made artificial islands off the coast in the shape of every continent.

The defenders of the Port Deal, having internalized the defeat of the Deal, are now pitching a massive tantrum. We are told that we are “ignorant and offensive” by a Bush nephew. We are told that the apocalypse will be upon us when the Arab world punishes us by disinvesting in our economy. The UAE which is said to be building an aerospace industry [they are buying an aerospace industry, they could never build one – LC] and they may decide not to purchase airliners from Boeing. Instead giving the business to Airbus. Let them. The Airbus product is inferior to the Boeing jet. If the UAE is willing to shoot their shiny new aerospace industry in the foot because their nose is out of joint are they really the kind of people we need to be in business with?

In fact, if the Arab world is so stupid as to be willing to turn their back on the largest most vibrant economy on the globe because of injured pride how much good will they do us as economic partners anyway?

We are also told that the President is “livid” with the “betrayal” he has suffered and that retribution will be swift and sure. Karl Rove is said to have already sent out the faxes to the Party leaders in the states instructing them that those Republican “traitors” are to get nothing when running for reelection. Excuse me, but help from a president whose numbers are in the toilet would be highly unlikely to be of any use to congressmen who defied the strongly expressed will of a supermajority of the American people.

About this “betrayal” business . . . we heard this in the Meiers debacle as well. Does the President believe that loyalty moves in one direction only, from bottom to top? Is he completely incapable of getting his mind around the concept that if he hands his allies (you know, the people who worked and gave and prayed and voted to put his ass in the Oval Office) a situation that they absolutely cannot accept that the betrayal might he his and not ours?

Ever since he began campaigning for his first term the Left has been telling us that Mr. Bush is abysmally stupid. If he is willing to go to war with his own party because they won’t give him every gorram thing he wants then the Left was right about him all along. Of course the Harriet Meiers kool-aid drinkers were quick to tell us that if the Meiers nomination went down in flames that Bush would punish us by next nominating a true liberal judicial activist. Instead we got Samuel Alito.

I don’t believe that the President is a stupid man. I don’t think you can graduate from Yale and be a dunce. I don’t think you can earn a Harvard MBA and be a moron. I don’t believe that a borderline retard can be elected governor of Texas and twice President of the United States. I give him a great deal more credit than his supposed defenders. I think that he will pick himself up and lick his wounds and go on. Just like he did after the Meiers nomination imploded.

I predict that the final outcome of this mess is going to be positive. Just as the nomination of Harriet Meiers wound up setting a new, much higher, standard for Supreme Court nominees the DP World fiasco will shine the light on the truly shabby state of our internal security.

In November public attention on national security can only help Republicans. Democrats are going to rue the day they ever heard the word “Dubai”.