Dubai Dubai Do

From almost the first break of the Dubai port controversy, I figured this was another case of much-ado-about-nothing - a mostly manufactured story spun to hurt Bush's approval ratings. It's been tremendously effective, especially in the first few days. Then more moderate voices like Glenn Reynolds began to come around.

I'm amazed that the story is still going, but when the coverage and commentary continues to distort and misstate to the extent it has, so I guess it should be no surprise.

So I'm disappointed in Tony Blankley's defense at Real Clear Politics. I like Blankley; he usally is straightforward and makes a lot of sense. But in this, he makes strange bedfellows with Joe Conason. Both attack those who wonder if objection to the deal is based on xenophobia, if not islamophobia.

And I mean "attack" because both Joe and Tony bend and stretch their strawmen rather violently.

No Soviet propagandist or third-world revolutionary has more stingingly libeled the American people.

One original thinker after another insists that there can be no honest criticism of the Dubai deal. They tell us that every critic, no matter how measured, is a protectionist bigot; and that every argument, no matter how rational, is a calumny against Arabs and Muslims. There is a strange whiff of demagogy in these screeds.

Each proceed to bring up already debunked details and assuaged concerns and ask disingenously, "To doubt the competence of this government is neither xenophobic nor racist."

Here's my take:
- This is a fairly minor deal in the big scheme of things. The transaction is the sale of a port management business between two foreign entities. In the U.S., this affects a number of port terminals - not entire ports - in major cities. I suspect the total affected is but a small fraction of all activity in those ports. So it's little suprise that Bush was not aware of the deal until after the ocntroversy erupted. Small potatoes, and he has a lot of more important issues to attend to.
- The Federal Government, by law, has a mechanism to review this transaction. In this process standards must be met and concerns answered. This appears to have been applied fairly to this deal. The Coast Guard raised questions, and much fuss was made in the media, but in the same report those questions were said to have been answered satisfactorily before final approval.
- So, we have a rather ordinary port management transaction subjected to due dilligence by the government. At the end of the process, if there is no basis for rejection the deal is approved.

Here's the kicker:
On what basis, then, should the Federal Government (the Executive Branch, the Bush Administration) reject the deal?

Imagine a checklist. One by one, each item is addressed by the interested parties and only when all requirements are satisfied is it checked. When all are checked off, the approval is final. But wait... The buyer is an Arab country under Muslim rule. "No ports for you!" The deciding factor is race and religion, isn't it? What do you call that if not bigotry?

Here's the point where objectors would point out the UAE's al-Qaeda connections and claim - without evidence - that there HAS to be a security risk, despite the fact that our security review uncovered none.

But maybe it is better to play it safe, given that history. Here again I think the story has been distorted.
- The links with al Qaeda are mostly superficial - i.e. They used thier banks. They passed through their airports.
- These transgressions are all pre 9/11. Since 9/11, UAE and Dubai in particular have been exceedingly helpful. Our Navy regular ports there.
- Dubai, although non-democratic and under a form of Sharia law, is one of the more open and cosmopolitan of all the Arab nations. Sort of a Hong Kong or Singapore of the Persian Gulf, a hub of banking, finance, and resort tourism. Heck, Michael Jackson lives there. This is no Taliban - not even a Syria.

Dubai has proven an ally in the GWOT, and I don't think we should be placing sanctions on them - at least not without due process. And that's what some in Congress are proposing. But they can't in fairness just ban this particular deal, without a clear-cut reason. So they must pass a broader regulation, banning either foreign-owned port operations (something like 70% of port terminals!) or foreign state-owned port operations (This would retroactively outlaw significant port operations by companies owned by China and Singapore.) Do we really want to go down this isolationist road?

As I said, from the start I suspected this of being a manufactured controversy. Ingenious, though, for Democrats to get to the right of Bush on security - and guaranteeing a bandwagon effect among insecure Republicans. Like most such stories, this one is based on mountains of disinformation. But it has the added benefit of appaling to latent bigotry in the Red States.