Watcher of Weasels:

The Fairness Doctrine

I've been trying to wrap my brain around this whole Dubai Ports World deal, and the controversey surrounding it...  and I'm really not sure what to think at this point.  We have Bush saying he will veto any effort made by Congress to stop the deal from going ahead...  which is astounding, when you consider how many other things he should have threatened to veto  Why did he get such a wild hair up his ass about this, especially since he wasn't even aware of the deal himself until after the scandal broke?  Many prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, are trying to jockey themselves into a position to the right of Bush on this issue..  and Bush is finding his support these days in a variety of strange places, including Jimmy Carter and John McCain.  The mind reels.

Given that the United Arab Emirates has connections to the 9/11 attacks, why was approval of the deal given after only a cursory investigation made by the the Treasury Department rather than a more thorough one made by Homeland Security?  And what's up with a Dubai Port World executive being given a Transportation Department appointment...  how does that factor into all this?  And what in the holy hell is Neil Bush doing hobnobbing around over there?

Defenders of the deal keep insisting that we can't turn our backs on the United Arab Emirates because it is a moderate Muslim country and one of our greatest alllies in the Middle East...  but who gets to decide what "moderate" is?  Should being less radical by comparison be the only requirement needed for a Middle Eastern country to become our ally?  Women in the UAE aren't required by law to cover themselves, but they aren't guaranteed equal protection by the UAE Constitution, which is derived from sharia law...  also, laws that should protect women in the UAE tend to get selectively enforced based upon a woman's social status, and many women are either pressured into conforming to traditions regardless of the law or are simply kept ignorant of their legal rights altogether.  Case in point: there are no laws against female genital mutilation, and the most recent statistics that I could find showed that over 30% of girls under the age of 6 had undergone some form of circumcision.  Well, at least rape victims in Dubai don't have to worry about getting stoned to death...  they are only threatened with jail time for daring to come forward and accuse their attackers.  Is this moderation?  Is this enlightenment?

And, finally, what about the UAE's role in lending undeserved credibility to the Cartoon Jihad?  If the Dubai Chamber of Commerce is enforcing a boycott of all Danish goods in response to a dozen Mohammed cartoons published by a privately owned Danish newspaper (but mainly in response to a few hoaxed cartoons created by radical Imams and distributed along with the others), then why should a state-owned company like Dubai Ports World be rewarded with this deal?