February 25, 2006
A Pitchfork Moment
By Pat Buchanan
"This Dubai port deal has unleashed a kind of collective mania
we haven't seen in decades ... a xenophobic tsunami," wails
a keening David Brooks. "A nativist, isolationist mass hysteria
is ... here."
The New
York Times columnist obviously regards the nation's splenetic
response to news that control of our East Coast ports had been
sold to Arab sheiks as wildly irrational. In witness whereof,
he quotes Philip Damas of Drewry Shipping Consultants: "The
location of a company in the age of globalism is irrelevant."
But irrelevant
to whom?
Why is it
irrelevant, in a war against Arab and Islamic terrorists, to question
the transfer of control of our East Coast ports from Great Britain
to the United Arab Emirates?
Our cosmopolitan
Brooks lives in another country. He has left the America of blood
and soil, shaken the dust from his sandals, to enter the new Davos
world of the Global Economy, where nationality does not matter,
and where fundamentalists and flag-wavers of all faiths are the
real enemies of progress toward the wonderful future these globalists
have in store for us.
"God
must love Hamas and Moktada Al-Sadr," snorts Brooks. "He
has given them the America First brigades of Capitol Hill."
To Brooks,
there is little distinction between Islamic mobs burning Danish
consulates and America First patriots protesting some insider's
deal to surrender control of American ports to Arab sheiks.
But the
reflexive recoil to this transaction between transnationals is
a manifestation of national mental health. The American people
have not yet been over-educated into the higher stupidity. Common
sense still trumps ideology here. Globalism has not yet triumphed
over patriotism. Rather than take risks with national security,
Americans will accept a pinch of racial profiling. Yep, the old
America lives.
Like alley
cats, Americans yet retain an IFF -- Identify-Friend-or-Foe --
radar that instinctively alerts them to keep a warier eye on some
folks than on others.
But in rejecting
a deal transferring control of our ports to Arabs, are Americans
not engaging in discrimination? Are they not engaging in prejudice?
Of course
they are. But not all discrimination is irrational, nor is all
prejudice wrong. To discriminate is but to choose. We all discriminate
in our choice of friends and associates. Prejudice means prejudgment.
And a prejudgment in favor of Brits in matters touching on national
security is rooted in history.
In the 20th
century (if not the 19th), the Brits have been with us in almost
every fight. It was not Brits who struck us on 9/11, who rejoiced
in the death of 3,000 Americans, who daily threaten us from the
mosques of East and West, who behead our aid workers, bomb our
soldiers and call for "Death to America!" in a thousand
demonstrations across the Middle East. And while not all Muslims
are terrorists, almost all terrorists appear to be Muslim.
As Mother
Church has a "preferential option" for the poor, there
is nothing wrong with America's preferential option for the cousins.
Does this
mean all Arabs should be considered enemies? Of course not. The
folks from Dubai may detest the 9/11 murderers as much as we do,
for those killers shamed their faith, disgraced their people,
and bred a distrust and fear of Arabs and Muslims that had never
before existed here.
Yet, just
as sky marshals seat themselves behind young Arab males, not grannies
taking the tots to Disney World, so Americans, in deciding who
operates their ports, naturally prefer ourselves, or old friends.
Why take
an unnecessary risk? Just to get an A for global maturity on our
next report card from the WTO?
The real
question this deal raises is what happened to the political antenna
at the White House. Did it fall off the roof about the time President
Bush named Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court?
Anyone in
touch with Middle America, especially after 9/11 and endless warnings
of imminent attacks on U.S. soil, would know this country is acutely
sensitive to terror threats. Surely, before approving this deal
with Dubai Ports World, someone should have asked:
"How
do you think Bubba will react when he's told sheiks will take
over the port of Baltimore, where in Tom Clancy's "Sum of
All Fears," Arab terrorists smuggle in an a-bomb and detonate
it?"
Apparently,
no one bothered to ask, or the question was brushed off in the
interests of hastily greasing the deal.
Now this
episode is going to end badly. Bush, who has denied advance knowledge
of the deal, is being ripped by liberals for living in a pre-9/11
world and being out of touch with his government.
As for our
remaining friends in the Middle East, they have been given another
reason to regard Americans as fickle friends who, down deep, don't
like Arabs.
Unquestionably,
this will result in a victory for those who wish to sever America's
friendships in the Arab world. But it is Bush and his unthinking
globalists, not the American Firsters whom Brooks cannot abide,
who are responsible for this debacle.
Copyright
2006 Creators Syndicate
