All right, this whole hot topic about letting Dubai Ports World manage six US ports has me confused. So, is it a terrible idea or not?

For once, the political lines are blurred. On the (miniscule) right print media, Wall St. Journal and Christian Science Monitor are for it; the New York Daily News is against it.

And so on. Right alt-media for and against; left alt-media for and against.

And the lefty print media … well, of the biggest papers, I couldn’t find a single one against the ports deal. Washington Post and The Boston Globe and The LA TimesAND New York Times are for it is for it (and for the record, I believe that’s the first time I’ve ever seen the NYT pass on an opportunity to trash-talk Bush).

And of course you’ve got all sorts of politicians arrayed for and against, but unfortunately, I kind of tend to assume in a big mid-term election year that everything they have to say has to do with posturing.

So I guess I’m starting to lean toward thinking maybe it is just a tempest in a teapot. I’ll tell you though, this quote from my favorite blogger (of the non-Christian-oriented sort anyway), James Lileks, says it all for why if nothing else, the Bush administration should have realized that it would strike us Regular Folks as a bad (and I mean, baaaad) idea:

I’m not worried that some evil emir is putting a pinky to his monocled eye, and saying Mwah! at last I have them where I want them! I’m worried about the guy who’s three steps down the management branch handing off a job to a brother who trusts some guys who have some sympathies with some guys who hang around some rather energetic fellows who attend that one mosque where the guy talks about jihad 24/7, and somehow someone gets a job somewhere that makes it easier for something to happen.

That’s a lot of ifs and maybes. But I don’t want any ifs and maybes. You can’t eliminate them all, of course, but I would rather we had a system devoted to worrying about ifs and maybes instead of adopting an official policy of Whatever.