Lou Minatti: UAE port deal: A Karl Rove plot?

Lou Minatti asks if the UAE ports deal is "A Karl Rove plot?" It certainly could be if the quotes he links are an indication. I think, though, that this one is too weird even for the crafty Karl.

How odd it is to see the deniers that Saddam had any ties to Al Qaeda claiming that "The UAE has ties to the 9/11 attacks," (B.S.) and the party of returning to the community of nations yelling about "turn[ing] over our sovereignty to another country." (H.C.)

Is the UAE really a "terrorist-friendly country?" I don't know, but if we really can't trust it, we ought to get our Navy out of its ports. The real problem is the original one posed by 9/11 itself: Who is the enemy? How do we find them and how do we fight them? The Bush policy always seemed to me to be based on the commonplace comment that we need to treat the root of terrorism. We can't kill all the terrorists or wage war against all of the societies that produce them, but we could do the world a favor by ridding it of Saddam Hussein and his loathesome henchmen, and helping Iraqis establish a democracy. Who could find fault with that?

Hardly anybody, when it came to authorizing the war, but it left Democrats grasping around for an issue and candidate to run on in 2004. Naturally, they reached back into their anger over the 2000 election and let it flood every other consideration. They haven't been able to think straight since. The party who accuses the right of racism and universal tolerance and respect now finds itself darkly urging that we just can't trust those Arabs.

The Arabs themselves seem to have enabled this strategy by their barbaric response to the Danish cartoons. People who would go deranged over something as silly as a few cartoons--well, how can you trust them?

A corollary question suggests itself: People who go deranged over something as silly as a close election--can we really trust them"