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is actually the most progressive of the Arab states at this point (yes, it's a hereditary monarchy, but they are, in fact moving towards elections, they are having them next month, in fact, for half the seats on the governing council. the other half will be appointed by the 7 emirs). but besides all that, we talk a good game about working with Arab states, and not being at war with the Arab world, but with an extreme faction (that the rulers of Dubai aren't big fans of either, by the way, the other emirs might be more sympatico, and there are certainly crazy relatives, when you have 250 cousins, SOME of them are going to be idiots, right?) Dubai has eliminated the Madrasses, where Muslim fundamentalism is taught, for instance) Yes, they are businessmen, and they haven't always done business with the right people, but then our hands aren't exactly clean in that respect either, are they? I think that, like much of the world, 9/11 was an awakening for them, it's one thing to tolerate a bunch of whackos who are targeting government buildings and military targets (like the Cole) it's another when you realize they are mass murderers of civilians completely unconnected to governments. Look what happened to the IRA, for instance. in the late 80's and 90's, they killed many more civlians than soldiers, and their support from abroad, especially in the US, dropped like a stone. in 1990, you could find IRA friendly bars in Boston and New York. People who helped raise money for the 'cause' but would never think of supporting 'terrorism'. Same with ETA in Spain. Once you start killing civilians randomly, people realize that it's not some romantic war, it's just plain murder. People have incredible blind spots, and everyone likes the underdog. Check out the romanticism of Che Guevara in the US now, people wear Che shirts, thinking he was a romantic freedom fighter. Which he was, except when he was a brutal enforcer who had no qualms about killing people to make a point. Were the people at O"Malley's Pub in Boston (fictional location) who threw a twenty into the hat when the Sinn Fein guy came along evil? or simply naive? anyway it's not relevant here.
Of course Dubai is pissed off at us, we just told them that they aren't welcome to do business here. For five years, they have done everything we asked of them, and they aren't really our type of people after all. There may have been legitimate concerns about the operation, but the reaction was, to the rest of the world, racist. It wasn't about a foreign company running the ports, it was about an Arab company running the ports. Now the average Tom, Dick or Harry may simply dislike foreign companies doing it, and had no idea, but you know Chuck Schumer knew that foreign companies do most of the port work in the US. And he didn't care until it was Arabs (and I don't really think he does care, it was simply politics) but our internal politics certainly look awful to the rest of the world now. If you were the UAE, where would you spend your money now? in the country that just told you, very publically and very humiliatingly, to fuck off? I wouldn't.
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