Surprised by Dubai? Why?

The Bush administration clears a deal to permit an United Arab Emirates (UAE) government owned company to acquire the British firm that manages six important US ports. The administration does this under the usual cover of public disinterest and journalistic laziness that permits so many deals like this to go unnoticed, hoping that it will slide under the radar. Unfortunately for the White House, talk radio hosts and bloggers pick up on the story. Radio audiences can’t believe their ears – not five years after 9/11, and after constant terror alerts, threats and two wars, the administration couldn’t seriously have put Arabs in control of such important assets?

The disbelief is short-lived. The administration sends out its flacks to defend the deal on the Sunday talk shows. When this only inflames Congressional outrage – spawned, doubtless, by tens of thousands of angry emails and phone calls from voters – the President himself comes out and not only defends the deal, but arrogantly insists that his authority places the deal beyond any public inspection or remedy. His veto – which he has wielded not once in five years to stem out-of-control public spending – will kill any attempt by Congress to stay the deal, he asserts, with all the finality of a monarch issuing an edit.

The President’s political faux pas catches his party by surprise, even as it delights his perennially hapless opposition (which consistently manages to squander any opportunity handed to it). Political strategists shake their heads in dismay. Conservative commentators express surprise, indignation and bewilderment.

But why, exactly, is anyone surprised by this? The Bush administration has, for five years, championed the "outsourcing" of every American industry that could possibly be shipped overseas. It has not merely refrained from defending US borders, but actively hampered border enforcement efforts and cheerleads for granting legitimacy for millions of illegal immigrants who have swarmed across the collapsing border during its tenure. The President has turned a blind eye to the dangerous rise of violent Central and South American gangs in US cities and the crime wave caused by millions of illegals in even rural areas. The President has shown no interest in the damage caused to American culture by the settlement of millions of foreigners who evince not the slightest interest in learning our language or culture, but are steadily forming a permanent underclass whose alien culture is quite hostile to the country in which they reside (rather like Muslims in Europe a quarter century ago). Nor has the allegedly compassionate president indicated any concern for the millions of lower class Americans whose salaries have been plummeted, or whose jobs have been lost to the millions of illegal aliens willing to work for almost nothing.

Are we surprised because President Bush as sold himself as "tough on national security?" How tough can one be on national security when you allow millions of foreigners, whose intentions and provenance are unknown, easy access to your country? President Bush remains president only because the Democrats have so discredited themselves on security and military issues that anyone looks better in comparison.

If conservatives need any additional measure of just how much damage President Bush has done to conservatism, they need only reflect on the remark he made yesterday challenging those opposed to the deal:

And I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British [sic] company.

This was said with a straight face. It was not intended as sarcasm or humor. It was meant to be taken as a serious argument. This is what passes for "tough on national security" in this administration. Subsequently, the administration and its few allies on the issue – including the illegal-immigration-is-wonderful-for-America crowd at the Wall Street Journal – have been accusing anyone who opposes the deal as being, well, racist. This is a page lifted directly from the Left’s playbook. That a conservative administration is now using this ploy lends legitimacy to the tactic and undermines every argument conservatives have made in favor of commonsense for the last fifty years. Not convinced? Consider this: Jimmy Carter couldn’t get in front of a reporter to defend the deal and make the same argument fast enough.

For the record, Mr. President, when was the last time United Kingdom, or group of Britons attacked the United States? By contrast, when was the last time an Arab country or group of Arabs attacked the United States? There’s the answer.

It is simple common sense that nations which exhibit any semblance of self-preservation do not allow their strategic assets to fall under the control of foreigners with a recent track record of hostility and violence against them. This is true whether one faces a traditional military (China) or a terrorist (Islamic nations) threat. The public instinctively understands this. Apparently, the Bush administration and its globalist, neoconservative ideological backers do not. If Iraq, the exploding federal budget and the catastrophe of unchecked illegal immigration weren’t enough to convince conservatives that they’ve been had, this should.