Now that American politicians and the media have managed to drag Dubai through the mud, they're coming to the realization that they may have also done some lasting damage to our country's relationship with one of our few Arab allies. Nice job! As Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, said:

he doesn't think opponents of the deal on Capitol Hill gave much thought to the possibility that blocking the deal could boomerang and end up hurting U.S. companies. "It's the law of unintended consequences," he says.

The biggest loser in the short-term, according to Reinsch, is the Bush administration, which has been trying to create a Middle East free trade zone modeled on NAFTA that would extend trade privileges with the United States to countries from North Africa all the way to Iraq by 2013.

Our wonderful representatives in Congress have screwed numerous businesses (and the middle class folks who are employed by them) in their zeal to gain some quick political points in time for the mid-term elections.

But Congress isn't the only bad guy here. I have rarely been as disgusted with the reporting of a story as much as I have been with how the Dubai Ports deal has been presented in the media. Did any reporter investigate why DP World wanted this deal? Or what their work has been like in the rest of the world? Of course not. The assumption was simply that these "scary Arabs" wanted to infiltrate American ports and blow them up or something. I never read any talk about what DP World could actually bring to port security. At least not until I read this after the deal was killed:

A top Gulf businessman in the transport business, and with links to the US, portrayed the outcome of the controversy as a huge missed opportunity. He said the DP World deal would have given US Customs and Port Authorities unparallelled insight and resources around the world.

“If US customs wanted to make an intervention on a suspected container they would have been able to do so as part of a seamless ­supply-chain service in the country of their choice. This is already happening today. However, the tie-up would only have cemented this relationship further and dramatically contributed to strengthening security,” he said.

Morever, why haven't I seen a slew of profile pieces about Dubai and its leaders? If this is such an important story, then shouldn't we know more about the country we're dealing with? Americans have a negative opinion of Dubai because they don't know anything about it. Would that change if they:

• Remembered that the UAE gave $100 million to Hurricane Katrina victims last year
• That Dubai's leader, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, personally gave nearly $10 million to 9/11 victims in the weeks following the attack.
• That the US military already uses ports in Dubai for its warships and was firmly behind the port deal
• That Dubai's Emirates Airlines flies into JFK twice-daily non-stop from Dubai. Think about what that means for a second:

  The home-country security for these flights is the responsibility of Muslim security officers and screeners. Any of these flights could simply veer off course and take out a skyscraper in a matter of seconds. Any of them could carry a nuclear weapon into our skies and detonate it over a city. Why are no politicians propounding on this threat? Should we shut them down? Even if we did, would that really end the threat?

A great (and rather lonely) article in the Hawaii Reporter really sums it up nicely:

The UAE is no democracy, but it is a trade-oriented society rightly seen as the “Hong-Kong of the Gulf.” About 60 percent of the UAE’s 3.4 million residents are non-native. The UAE is currently host to more US Navy ships than any foreign port. It is a banking, tourism, and shipping center for the entire region. In surveys, a plurality of Iraqis indicate the UAE is the country they would most like to emulate.

Among Islamic countries the UAE is one of the most progressive. If we choose to wall ourselves off from a country such as this, then what are we doing in Iraq or Afghanistan? The entire strategy of forcing the development of democracy is at question and the questions are being asked by the usual isolationist forces on both left and right joined by hordes of political opportunists.

We can bring about mutual respect with the Islamic world based on the spread of democracy, trade, cultural and diplomatic exchanges -- and military action as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Failing that, the options only get uglier: fight a nuclear war, or surrender to gangs of nuclear armed head chopping baby killers. A U.S.-Soviet style detent is not even a temporary option with nuclear terrorists.

No strategy is without risk. President Bush’s strategy emphasizing development of broad military, political, diplomatic and economic relations with Muslim societies as full or partial allies in the war on terror has paid off in terms of thousands of terrorists captured or killed. The risk of abandoning this strategy is far greater than the risks associated with continuing it.

The only reason I know anything about Dubai is because of the Maktoum family's involvement in horse racing. Sheik Mohammed is arguably the world's top owner and breeder of thoroughbred horses. By following his racing enterprise, you can actually learn a lot about Dubai's ruler. One thing you quickly learn is his immense pride in his country. The Maktoum family has built Dubai from an oil-fed city into the great trading, financial and tourism center of the Middle East. It's an amazing accomplishment.

What American politicians and media members have done is dismiss that accomplishment and defined Dubai soley in terms of the race and religion of its people. We just told the Maktoums that the only thing that really matters about them is that they're Arab and Muslim.

I really wouldn't blame the UAE if they got out of a whole bunch of business deals with American companies in the next few weeks after the way they were treated. And, I'm so rooting for one of the Maktoum's horses to win the Kentucky Derby this year. Go Discreet Cat!