I love it because it’s starting to feel a bit like the Danish cartoon controversy, in the sense that it’s pulling back the curtain on two of the most difficult relationships of this historical moment: the relationship between the West and the Arab world, and the relationship between individual nations and globalization.

And like the cartoon issue, there are more ironies than easy answers in the port debate. Here’s my current favorite irony:

The Bush administration, to support its foreign policy aims, has made a point of exploiting Americans’ fears of terrorism and the dim understanding people in this country have of the Arab world. Now the same administration that nurtured Americans’ confusion about which Arabs attacked us on Sept. 11 (Remember when a huge percentage of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11?) — this same administration now wants the average American to start differentiating between scary Arabs and not-so-scary Arabs, between a shipping company owned by the United Arab Emirates and the checkered history the UAE has in combating terrorism and nuclear proliferation, between the Arab allies we would want running our ports (apparently, the UAE) and the Arab allies we wouldn’t want running our ports (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.) Good luck, Mr. President.

Marueen Dowd has a great column today, in which she describes Bush as having been “hoist on his own petard” on this issue. She means in terms of the security debate:

For four years, the White House has accused anyone in Congress or the press who defended civil liberties or questioned anything about the Iraq war of being soft on terrorism. Now, as Congress and the press turn that accusation back on the White House, Mr. Bush acts mystified by the orgy of xenophobia.

She’s right. But he’s also being hoist on the petard of Republican xenophobia — a xenophobia that Bush and others rely on to rally their base. The port story is about security, sure, but it’s also about a lot of Republicans now having to assure their constituents that they don’t want the United Arab Emirates running our ports, either.