Rhinocrisy

Hi all! No, I wasn’t crushed to death in a trash compactor! I’ve just been trying to finish this paper, which means I’m not blogging at work, which is where I get my best stuff done. Anyway, this post comes to you courtesy of procrastination.

There’s been a lot of noise made about a decision to allow a UAE-based company to manage U.S. ports. A lot of this noise comes from liberal quarters, where it’s apparently okay to tar Arabs with the broad brush of terrorism if it looks bad for Bush. Atrios is pretty reliable for saying the wrong thing in such instances, and doesn’t disappoint this time:

Normally I’m made a little bit uncomfortable by issues which have a crypto-racist tinge to them - they’re Arabs so they’re bad! - but this seems to be a genuine issue. Why the hell would we let a UAE owned company handle domestic port operations?

Note the obvious subtext. “Normally I’m a little bit uncomfortable - but I can’t pass up some Bush-baiting. Fuck those dirty Arabs anyway!” Or Kos, who has a whole section devoted to this flap, including this especially telling diary:

The “opponents of the port deal are racists and xenophobes” argument has both puzzled and enraged me for the past 48 hours. People much smarter than me have pointed out that if you spend three years drumming into Americans’ heads that “Arabs = scary” they might believe you.

So, I was looking at the Dubai tourism website from a link on a previous diary, and found this under the “General Information” section of the “Visa Regulations” tab:

Nationals of “Israel” may not enter the U.A.E.

Now, there are those who want us to believe that this is a matter of simply “free trade” or “international business as usual” and “confidence building among trade partners.” But ask yourselves if this were any other situation in which our “trading partner” imposed such a restriction, whether outrage would be warranted.

And STFU about the “xenophobia” stuff.

(Irony, you will recall, died sometime during the Nixon administration of “asphyxiation”, and thus does not apply to this particular post, no matter how ironic you might find it.)

I don’t have much to add. It’s obviously racist to assume that a given party is not trustworthy merely because they’re Arab. It makes me highly inclined to doubt the trustworthiness of the bloviating parties on such subjects as the USA PATRIOT act and anti-Arab racism in general. Political opportunism is no substitute for, you know, um, principles.