An ally has been betrayed...

There is no other way to describe what has happened to the United Arab Emirates over this port deal.

The elected representatives of the people have just told an ally, "It doesn't matter that you sent troops to Afghanistan, aided the victims of Hurricane Katrina, provided us logistical support in the Persian Gulf, and provided us valuable intelligence prior to the liberation of Afghanistan, we're going to call you 'demonstrably unreliable' anyway."

They did so in the face of a coordinated campaign from pundits like Michelle Malkin and Frank Gaffney, who waged a campaign of fear-mongering that was largely fact-free. When I did my piece for Strategypage.com, I found information that disproved the "demonstrably unreliable" statement in a few simple searches via Google, the State Department's web site, and the Defense Department's web site. The United Arab Emirates is a good ally (but that may change given the recent attacks). The troops they sent to Afghanistan would have been as dead as Pat Tillman if the Taliban has attacked. The US owed the UAE loyalty in return. Congress instead betrayed the UAE.

I’ve think I’ve been consistent in that regard, being willing to criticize Colin Powell for blacklisting Carlos Castano’s United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, criticizing the decision to dump on Uzbekistan, in addition to hammering critics of the port deal for their comments about the UAE. When people assist the United States of America - and take risks doing so, they are owed loyalty. In the case of the UAE, al-Qaeda threatened to attack them. Uzbekistan assisted us despite the fact that al-Qaeda had managed to assassinate Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance two days prior to 9/11 (which had to be in the back of any Central Asian leader's mind in late 2001). All Carlos Castano did was to take on Pablo Escobar's Medellin drug cartel on its own turf and terms, then launch a similar effort against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

There is only one real winner in this ports controversy - Iran's nascent Hitler, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And he owes a great deal of credit to Michelle Malkin and Frank Gaffney for his victory.

EDIT: Bogus Gold also comments on how some flew off the handle, naming Malkin. AJ-Strata also fires off a pair of great posts blasting the opponents and explaining what we lost.