[Mb-civic] IMPORTANT: Burning Allies -- and Ourselves - David Ignatius - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Burning Allies -- and Ourselves

By David Ignatius
The Washington Post
Friday, March 10, 2006; A19

DUBAI -- Officials here heard late Thursday that Karl Rove had decided 
to pull the plug. President Bush's political adviser was said to have 
conveyed to a top manager of Dubai Ports World in Washington that the 
White House couldn't hold out any longer against congressional pressure 
to kill the Arab company's plan to acquire freight terminals at six U.S. 
ports. The initial response of one Dubai executive was: "Who's Karl 
Rove?" But in the end, political leaders here recognized that it was 
time to fold a losing hand.

Until Rove's decision, Dubai's business leaders had insisted they would 
fight on. The chairman of Dubai Ports World, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, 
told me emphatically on Wednesday that his company would do whatever was 
necessary to convince Congress that the deal posed no security risk -- 
new investment, additional equipment, more scanning of cargo, special 
checks of UAE personnel, including himself. But that was before the 
House Appropriations Committee voted 62 to 2 to kill the deal.

I suspect America will pay a steep price for Congress's rejection of 
this deal. It sent a message that for all the U.S. rhetoric about free 
trade and partnerships with allies, America is basically hostile to Arab 
investment. And it shouldn't be surprising if Arab investors respond in 
kind. One could blame it all on craven members of Congress, if the 
opinion polls didn't show that Americans are overwhelmingly against the 
deal -- and suspicious of Muslims in general. Those poll numbers tell us 
that America hasn't gotten over Sept. 11, 2001. If anything, Iraq has 
deepened the country's anxiety, introspection and foreboding.

To appreciate how cockeyed America's Dubai-phobia is, you have to spend 
a little time here, as I did this week. The truth is, this is one of the 
few places in the Arab world where things have been going in the right 
direction -- away from terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism and toward 
an open, modern economy. That's why congressional opposition came as 
such a surprise here. People in the UAE think they're America's friends.

The ports deal was part of the UAE's embrace of things Western. 
Wednesday night, I traveled with the minister of higher education, Sheik 
Nahayan bin Mubarak, to the dusty city of Al Ain to attend a Mozart 
festival at which the Vienna Chamber Orchestra performed. And I visited 
the American University of Sharjah, created nine years ago as a beacon 
of liberal arts education. On a wall next to the chancellor's office is 
a photo of the twin towers in New York, taken by one of the students on 
June 8, 2001. "There are no words strong enough to express how we feel 
today," reads a statement signed by UAE students.

It's hard to imagine an Arab more pro-American than Sulayem. He earned a 
degree in economics from Temple University in 1981, and he's still a 
fanatic about Philadelphia cheese steaks. He described a pilgrimage last 
New Year's Eve from New York to Pat's King of Steaks in South Philly, 
only to find the place closed. Before the deal collapsed, Sulayem had a 
free-trader's conviction that good business judgment would prevail over 
political rhetoric. "We are businessmen -- we don't understand politics 
-- but it is a surprise to us. We have been cooperating with the U.S. We 
are their best friends."

Many of the UAE's political leaders, including the crown prince, 
Mohammed bin Zayed, had grown increasingly convinced this week that the 
wisest course would be to pull out. But that view was resisted until 
almost the end by the business leadership in Dubai, including Dubai's 
ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid.

Arab radicals will be gloating, admonishing the UAE leaders, "We told 
you so." But officials here recognize that they're in a common fight 
with us against al-Qaeda. And unlike some Arab nations, the UAE really 
is fighting -- reforming its education system to block Islamic zealots 
and taking public stands with the United States despite terrorist 
threats. They have created one of the best intelligence services in the 
Arab world, and their special forces will be fighting quietly alongside 
the United States in Afghanistan tomorrow, and the day after.

President Bush tried to do the right thing on the Dubai ports deal, but 
he got rolled by a runaway Congress. The collapse of the deal was a 
measure of Bush's political weakness -- but even more, of America's 
traumatized post-Sept. 11 politics. The ironic fact is that the UAE is 
precisely the kind of Arab ally the United States needs most now. But 
that clearly didn't matter to an election-year Congress, which responded 
to the Dubai deal with a frenzy of Muslim-bashing disguised as concern 
about terrorism. And we wonder why the rest of the world doesn't like us.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/09/AR2006030902291.html
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