THE DEAL ON DUBAI

In Dubai, everyone refers to their ruler, Emir Mohammed Bin Rashid al-Maktoum, as "MBR."  Just to give you an idea of how he is into tourism not terrorism, here’s a quick story.

He has closed circuit television in his private office.  And what are the cameras trained on?  Immigration/passport control lines at the airport.  If MBR sees the lines are getting too long, he picks up the phone and orders more personnel to reduce the lines.  Again, his focus is tourism not terrorism.

The US Navy docks its ships at Dubai more often than at any other non-US port in the world.  25,000 Americans (and 100,000 Brits) live and work in the Emirates now.

The realization that Dubai and the UAE is the most pro-American Arab country on earth is sinking in to fevered Congressional brains as their spasm of knee-jerk xenophobia dissipates. 

It was also an embarrassment for them to learn that the National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (NSCSA – owned by the Saudi government and Saudi individuals) has operated terminals for years at the ports of Baltimore, New Orleans, Houston, Savannah, Newark, and Brooklyn.  A terminals list is on the nscsaamerica.com website.

Why hasn’t Little Chuckie Schumer and Over The Hillary Clinton screamed about this?  Brooklyn is in New York, right? 

You know they’re scraping the bottom of the demagogue barrel when they trot out the canard that the UAE is a signatory to the Arab boycott of Israel.  Yes, and there are laws against prostitution in Vegas – which means there must be no hookers in Sin City, yes?  Dubai does business with Israel hand over fist.  The Dubai intel and Mossad guys know each other well.  After all, their common enemy, Iran, is only 50 miles away from the UAE across the Strait of Hormuz.

The shame in this is that Conservative Republicans in Congress, by allowing themselves to get suckered into Bush-bashing Democrat xenophobia, blew their chance to make a deal with GW.

While they fulminated and rabble-roused right along with Schumer, GW stayed calm and obdurate, fanned out his folks around the country to explain the ports deal, and had the satisfaction of seeing Tommy Friedman in the New York Times and Richard Cohen in the Washington Post praise him and condemn Schumer.

If they had kept their wits about them, the Republican Conservative Caucus in the House could have gone to Bush in the heat of the frenzy and offered to back him on the ports deal if he would back them on real border protection and illegal immigration control.

Along with allowing runaway government spending, the most maddening thing about the Bush 43 presidency to conservatives is GW’s inexplicable unwillingness to put a stop to illegal immigration across the Mexican border.  Here at last was a chance to turn Bush around.

Maybe they’ll still try.  Tancredo is about to give it a shot.  But it looks like the moment of opportunity has passed.  The "45 day waiting period" has given angry Congresscritters an easy exit from their opposition.  Bill Frist has announced he’s abandoning any effort at blocking-legislation.  Duncan Hunter’s threat of a bill to kill the deal is a dead letter.

This deal is set.  Bush has won and the conservatives’ temper tantrum has cost them dearly.