Word: dubai
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...Good luck, fella! Shaping the present seems hard enough for the Bush Administration. The abrupt Republican skedaddle away from Bush on the Dubai ports issue was a vivid demonstration of the populist fever rising in America-a make-the-world-go-away attitude that seems likely to spill over from Dubai to the war in Iraq. The best rationale for a continuing U.S. military presence-that the troops are preventing a civil war-began to evaporate with the internecine chaos last week. Indeed, the Dubai controversy may have opened the door for the ultimate apostasy: Bush could rapidly lose Republican...
...exceedingly odd position for a post-Reagan Republican. He is acting like a Democrat, standing for abstract principles and high-minded long-term projects in the face of a public demanding easy answers and immediate results. His Middle East-democracy campaign is Wilsonian. His support for the Dubai ports deal is reminiscent of Jimmy Carter's support for relinquishing control of the Panama Canal-difficult to explain politically but in the nation's best long-term interests. Does anyone actually believe that the management suits in Dubai would run those ports any differently from the suits in Britain? Wouldn...
...closest thing to a working political antenna at the White House these days may be the one on Dan Bartlett's car radio. Congressional anger over President George W. Bush's decision to allow a Dubai-owned company to operate terminals at major U.S. ports had been at a low boil for days before the White House got its first inkling of the furor: Bartlett, the presidential counselor, happened to tune in to conservative talk-show host Michael Savage on the way home from work. By the time the President moved to quash it several days later with assurances...
While none of that is particularly comforting, it does make the outrage directed at Dubai Ports World, which has operated 23 facilities on five continents without a mote of protest, seem a bit unfair. And it raises the question of how the Administration is supposed to win hearts and minds in the Muslim world if it presumes that all businesses there are natural enemies. The President went so far as to ask, "those who are questioning [the deal] to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard...
There is also a legitimate strategic concern about alienating the United Arab Emirates (Dubai is one of the seven emirates), given that it has been a recent but important convert to the Administration's campaign against terrorism. "Totally in bed" is how a senior intelligence official characterized the U.A.E.'s relationship with the U.S.; Senator John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, says, "The U.A.E. is a vital, I repeat, a vital ally...