Dubai gets curiouser and curiouser

Richard Cohen has an uplifting article in today's Washington Post which shows there is a lot of thoughtfulness on the left about the racial-profiling leading Democrats are indulging in.

We are in an odd era of symbolic news events[my emphasis]. The Dick Cheney shooting was treated as if it were 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 and a dislike of things and people Arab. The deal 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 Washington 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.

But before you take a deep breath and assume the sun salute yoga pose in celebration, the latest Jerusalem Post article that the DP World enforces the Israeli Boycott will predictably panic the panderers into baying at the mid-day sun.

The fact is that the entire continent of Asia, especially India, regards the American political elite, with some exceptions, and with the Rasmussen Poll, the American People, as selective racial profilers in this train wreck.

James Taranto sort of sums up the whole sorry affair with a quick take on racism:

We've argued that the likely result of another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 would be "a retreat into isolationism and an emphasis on homeland security":

Its elements could include genuine curtailments of civil liberties, an end to the taboo against ethnic and religious profiling, restrictions on immigration, and heightened security that introduces enormous inconveniences into everyday life while constraining the flow of people and goods into America.

The public's receptivity to Dubai hysteria suggests that there is an appetite for just such an approach--one that, in our view would be very bad for America and even worse for the rest of the world. Politicians who agree would do well to be more circumspect about pandering to such impulses.

Asking politicians to take the high road is like telling Motor Mouth Schumer to avoid microphones----the AP story originating the whole controversy actually had Schumer's alarmist quotes embedded----so patent panderer Chuckie probably is congratulating himself right now in leading the pander-pack to the Promised Land.