There are times when
George Bush sorely disappoints. Just when you might expect him
to issue a malapropian explanation, pander to his base or simply
not have a clue about what he is talking about, he does something
so right, so honest and, yes, so commendable, that -- as Arthur
Miller put it in ``Death of a Salesman'' -- ``attention must be
paid.'' Pay attention to how he has refused to indulge anti-Arab
sentiment over the Dubai ports deal.
Would that anyone
could say the same about many of the deal's critics. Whatever
their concerns may be, whatever their fears might be, they would
not have had them, expressed them or have seen them in print had
the middle name of the United Arab Emirates been something else.
After all, no one goes nuts over Germany, the country where some
of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists lived and attended school.
To overlook the xenophobic
element in this controversy is to overlook the obvious. It is
what propelled the squabble and what sustains it. Bush put his
finger on it right away. ``What I find interesting is that it's
OK for a British company to manage some ports, but not OK for
a company from a country that is a valuable ally in the war on
terror,'' he said last week. ``The UAE has been a valuable partner
in fighting the war on terror.'' It is a long way from a terrorist
haven.
Somewhere in the
White House, a political operative -- maybe the storied Karl Rove
-- must have slapped his head in consternation as Bush made that
remark. The politic thing for a president with a dismal approval
rating (about 40 percent) would have been to join with the critics,
get ahead of the anti-Arab wave and announce that he, too, was
concerned about the deal which was the fault, now that he thought
about it, of pointy-headed bureaucrats, Democrats and the occasional
atheist. Instead, the White House stuck to its guns, ordering
a symbolic retreat -- more study -- but continuing to back the
deal.
That Bush has done
this should come as no surprise. As a bigot he leaves a lot to
be desired. He has refused to pander to anti-immigration forces
and shortly after 9/11, if you will remember, he visited Washington's
Islamic Center. He reassured American Muslims and the worldwide
Islamic community that neither America nor its government were
waging war on an entire people.
``The face of terror
is not the true faith of Islam,'' Bush said back then -- and he
has since repeated this message over and over again. That very
year -- November of 2001 -- Bush invited 52 Muslim diplomats to
a traditional Iftar dinner, breaking the daily Ramadan fast, and
he has occasionally cited purported racism as the reason some
people doubt the Muslim world will, as Bush so fervently wishes,
make progress toward Democracy. They think people whose skin is
``a different color than white'' are incapable of self-government,
he has said.
We are in an odd
era of symbolic news events. Just recently, the Dick Cheney shooting
mishap was treated as if it were, by itself, of cosmic political
importance. Some pundits even called on the vice president to
resign while others merely saw everything the Bush administration
had gotten wrong -- an almost inexhaustible list -- as distilled
in a single bad shot and the resultant pout. Now, it is the port
controversy.
But if the Cheney
story was about everything else -- including, of course, the taciturn
and slippery Cheney himself -- then this port controversy is really
about security anxiety (stoked somewhat by the Bush administration)
and a long-standing dislike of things and people Arab. The deal
itself may not be perfect, but it is a long way from a Page One
story.
America has many
friends in the Arab world. You can go to Saudi Arabia, for instance,
and talk ``American" at a dinner party -- banter about the
Redskins or California real estate prices or, of course, politics.
The region is home to many people who have gone to school in the
United States and admire it greatly. They are not the majority,
by any means, but they are important and influential -- and they
are being slowly alienated by knee-jerk insults and brainless
policies that reflect panic and prejudice. The true security cost
of the Dubai deal has already been inflicted.
Maybe because Bush
is a Bush -- son of a president who got to know many Arabs --
or maybe because he just naturally recoils from prejudice, his
initial stance on this controversy has been refreshingly admirable.
Whatever the case, the president has done the right thing. Attention
must be paid.
©
2006, Washington Post Writers Group
