Richard Cohen is an ass:First it was Limbaugh calling opponents of the Dubai Port deal "racists". Later on in that same week, it was David Brooks, only he was genteel and said they were "nativists". By the weekend just past, the "anti-Arab" slur was being repeated by Chris Wallace on Fox News Channel and Tim Russert on Meet the Press.
So, what do we read in the latest Richard Cohen
column? That the "you're a racist" charge used by the White House to defend itself, it actually, get this, a high-minded stance against "bigotry".
[Bush] has refused to indulge anti-Arab sentiment over the Dubai ports deal. [...]
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 okay for a British company to manage some ports, but not okay 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.
Oh yeah, Rove must have been really worried that Bush was implying his opponents were racists.
Cohen even trots out a variant of the
Frances Townsend defense, the one that categorizes governments, not on the basis of how they behave, but whether terrorists have ever spent time in a given country:
Whatever their concerns may be, whatever their fears, they would not have had them, expressed them or 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.
What's truly obnoxious is that Bush has, time and again, blurred any distinction between players in the Middle East. That's how the public came to believe that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks. Bush's hands are not clean.
For a long time, we've been inclined to give Cohen plenty of slack, but he's deteriorated a lot in the last five years and now is basically worthless as a serious commentator. (Just like
Joe Klein.)
posted by Quiddity at 2/27/2006 11:00:00 PM
Good point about the Carlyle Group, a key part of the Bush family's portfolio. Meanwhile, Neil Bush has been making business connections with the UAE government's help, so this deal seems to be in the interest of the Bush family, not the U.S.
What I found odd was Cohen's apparently first-hand experience of "talking American" to Arab acquaintances in Saudi Arabia (I believe that's whom he mentioned)--talk about the "Redskins" and "California real estate prices," as if that certified the Arab elite as "regular guys." Again, our elite press give us a glimpse into their fancified world. It would appear that Cohen has been wined and dined in the middle east, and has concluded that these "guys" are okay with him. Never mind that their women live a horrible, repressed existence in many cases, or that terrorists are given a little slack as long as they don't turn on their home government.
Meanwhile, the UAE has been described as one big "sweatshop" (at Liberaloasis.com). This is the kind of treatment of labor Bush no doubt endorses as part of his global war on the middle and working classes, but I don't think losing a bunch more union jobs down the road will be good for America.
Finally, the Dubai ports deal allowed all records to be kept offshore, preventing any access to them and virtually assuring that the Dubai company could not be sued for any negligence or criminal activity. That's too big an exception for ANY company doing ANY kind of work that touches on national security. Why on earth would this be acceptable?
