Ahoy, Osama!

(Posted yesterday at Mystery Achievement)

James K. Glassman comments on President Bush's support for a Dubai-based company, and has a Marlon Brando/General Kurtz white-hot bullet moment:

And Dubai -- I don't have to tell you -- is an Arab nation. Yes, two of the 9/11 hijackers were citizens of the UAE, but, then again, as Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute notes, Richard Reid, the attempted "shoe bomber," was a British citizen, and Jose Padilla, among others, is an American citizen (as was Timothy McVeigh). The UAE has been a staunch ally in the war on terror, training security forces in Iraq and helping to cut off the flow of money to al Qaeda.

Isn't this precisely what the United States preaches? Don't we want places like Dubai to fight terror and to grow, to invest, to buy, to trade, to adopt Western commercial practices, to expose themselves to the rest of the world and thus become tolerant and moderate?

Instead, congressional leaders are trying to kill the deal, which is set to go into effect next week. Why? "Outsourcing the operations of our largest ports to a country with a dubious record on terrorism is a homeland security and commerce accident waiting to happen," says Schumer.

This is rank racist nonsense. Schumer knows very well that responsibility for port security in the United States lies not with DP World or any other operator, but instead with the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Customs. "Nothing changes with respect to security under the contract," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "The Coast Guard is in charge of security, not the corporation."

Using Schumeresque logic, the U.S. should ban flights into the U.S. by airlines from Arab countries, and we should certainly bar any cargo from being loaded in Arab ports and bound for the U.S. ("If you are worried about a bomb in a box going off in New York, you need to worry about who loads the container overseas rather than the terminal operator who unloads it in the U.S.," says someone who actually knows something about port security, Theodore Price of Optimization Alternatives, a Texas company that provides terminal-operating software.) In fact, one would suppose that Dubai, with billions at stake, would be more careful -- not less -- about assisting in anti-terror activities at U.S. ports if it is actually operating them.

Yeah, unless the loader and the terminal operator are in cahoots to smuggle deadly contraband into a U.S. port, James. Nice try, too, trying to scare us conservatives into thinking we're anything-goes, free-market libertarians by quoting a DEMOCRATIC!! Congressman. Problem is, we haven't exactly been "racist" up to this point in our choice of who operates our ports.CNN gets slammed frequently (and deservedly) for the "Bring Me The Head Of George W. Bush" slant it puts on the news. But I find that its stories often reward those who have the patience to stick it out until the last paragraph. As in, the last paragraph of this one:

Foreign-owned companies operate many ports in the United States. For example, companies from China, Denmark, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan run docks in Los Angeles, California.

Check it out, yo! All kinds o' non-Caucasians in that line-up! And what do they all have in common? Two very essential things, if you stop and think about it:

1. They've never sponsored or otherwise supported a terrorist attack on American soil.

2. The vast majority of their citizens are not Muslims.

The charge of "racism" against Americans who fear a group not for the color of their skin, or their last names, but for what their religion tells them to do is a canard employed frequently by both Islamist propogandists and the self-haters of the Western Left every time we show some signs that we are willing not only to take the military fight to our enemies, but--and especially--when we actively exposes the lies that both the Islamists and the W.L. use to try to convince us that "resistance is futile."

Which is why I have believed for a long time now that there is absolutely no meaningful difference between the two aforementioned groups and self-indulgent, libertarian anarchists like James Glassman, Glenn Reynolds, and their like when it comes to loving and defending the shreds and shards that are left of the moral and ethical patrimony of the Judeo-Christian West. To wit: They are not interested in it at all, as long as whatever result of whatever happens gives them as much time and cash as they want to spend on Russian hookers and crack--or whatever else tickles their fancies.

And as if any more evidence were needed that President Bush's plan is the bastard offspring of a tube of Testor's and a room with poor circulation, Time.com lands the coup de grace:

As the simmering dispute boiled over, it looked as if Bush’s only high-profile supporter would be former president Jimmy Carter, who said on CNN that he did not think the deal was a threat to the United States or its security.[...]

Go ahead. Rub your eyes. Blink. Now read it again.Jimmy Effen Carter does not think the deal is a threat to our security.What else do you need to know, people?

ADDENDUM 251325Z FEB 06: Joseph D'Hippolito emails a link to a must-read post from Gates of Vienna that takes the opposite view of President Bush's decision; justifying it based on both the President's character and track record, and the possibility that he's forging a coalition to drop the hammer on Iran--one that includes the U.A.E. and other Arab Muslim countries. At this point, who knows? For now, I'll echo the sentiments of Baron Bodissey's reader, Shellback: Although I am a fan of Bush's, I won't drink Kool-Aid for him. Or anybody else, for that matter.