[Mb-civic] Bush, Speaking Up Against Bigotry - Richard Cohen - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Bush, Speaking Up Against Bigotry

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, February 28, 2006; A15

There are times when George Bush sorely disappoints. Just when you might 
expect him to issue a malapropian explanation, pander to his base or 
simply not have a clue about what he is talking about, he does something 
so right, so honest and, yes, so commendable, that -- as Arthur Miller 
put it in "Death of a Salesman" -- "attention must be paid." Pay 
attention to how he has refused to indulge anti-Arab sentiment over the 
Dubai ports deal.

Would that anyone could say the same about many of the deal's critics. 
Whatever their concerns may be, whatever their fears, they would not 
have had them, expressed them or seen them in print had the middle name 
of the United Arab Emirates been something else. After all, no one goes 
nuts over Germany, the country where some of the Sept. 11, 2001, 
terrorists lived and attended school.

To overlook the xenophobic element in this controversy is to overlook 
the obvious. It is what propelled the squabble and what sustains it. 
Bush put his finger on it right away. "What I find interesting is that 
it's okay for a British company to manage some ports, but not okay for a 
company from a country that is a valuable ally in the war on terror," he 
said last week. "The UAE has been a valuable partner in fighting the war 
on terror." It is a long way from a terrorist haven.

Somewhere in the White House, a political operative -- maybe the storied 
Karl Rove -- must have slapped his head in consternation as Bush made 
that remark. The politic thing for a president with a dismal approval 
rating (about 40 percent) would have been to join with the critics, get 
ahead of the anti-Arab wave and announce that he, too, was concerned 
about the deal, which was the fault, now that he thought about it, of 
pointy-headed bureaucrats, Democrats and the occasional atheist. 
Instead, the White House stuck to its guns, ordering a symbolic retreat 
-- more study -- but continuing to back the deal.

That Bush has done this should come as no surprise. As a bigot he leaves 
a lot to be desired. He has refused to pander to anti-immigration 
forces, and shortly after Sept. 11, if you will remember, he visited 
Washington's Islamic Center. He reassured American Muslims and the 
worldwide Islamic community that neither America nor its government were 
waging war on an entire people.

"The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam," Bush said back then 
-- and he has since repeated this message over and over again. That very 
year -- in November 2001 -- Bush invited 52 Muslim diplomats to a 
traditional Iftar dinner, breaking the daily Ramadan fast, and he has 
occasionally cited purported racism as the reason some people doubt the 
Muslim world will, as Bush so fervently wishes, make progress toward 
democracy. They think people whose skin is "a different color than 
white" are incapable of self-government, he has said.

We are in an odd era of symbolic news events. 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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/27/AR2006022701041.html
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