Last weekend my head almost exploded. The moment came when I tried to come to terms with the fact that I agreed with George Bush on something.

After the plan to sell the rights to administer major American ports to a company from Dubai was revealed, Bush has taken heat from both Democrats and Republicans.

To be fair, the United Arab Emirates was the home of two of the 9/11 hijackers. Nevertheless, Bush claims that it is important that we show our willingness to conduct business with Arab countries and not lend credence to those who would like us to be engaged in a war with the entire Muslim world.

His real motivation might be that the deal will result in a load of Arab oil money, but this might be the most rational thing to come out of this administration since they threw Harriet Meiers overboard.

According to Time magazine’s Mike Allen, “it’s now George W. Bush who wants to transcend 9/11 and Democrats who want to relive it.”

While congressmen from both sides of the aisle will attempt to capitalize on the controversy to score political points, the president’s support for the deal actually shows some consistency with the values he purportedly hopes to spread around the glove. The United Arab Emirates has been extremely cooperative with U.S. intelligence agencies and its ports are crucial to the military. Alienating one of our few allies in the Middle East now would be foolish.

Politically, however, the deal allows Democrats a chance to hurt the president on the only issue on which Americans still view him favorably: security. And, with congressional elections drawing near, Republicans dare not cede any ground on this crucial issue.

According to critics, this sale would represent a threat to our national security.

Sometimes one can pick sides on an issue just by taking a look at who is on the other side – here, this is the case.

On Friday, right-winger and Joseph Geobbels sound-alike, Ann Coulter of the Conservative Political Action Committee said, “I think our motto should be, post-9/11, rag head talks tough, rag head faces consequences.”

Coulter’s opposition to the Dubai port deal is the result of her painting the Muslim world in black and white. She has openly advocated racial profiling for terrorist suspects for years, – a policy that evidently applies to business deals as well.

This mind set can have reprehensible consequences.

Racial animus has informed public policy in our nation’s past. In Korematsu v. United States, one of its most despised rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the internment of Japanese-Americans after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. While Americans now look back on that incident with embarrassment, the urgent need to prevent terrorism can make it difficult to imagine how future generations will judge us.

Frighteningly, this xenophobic reaction is not limited to the Dubai port deal. In fact, xenophobia is currently shaping a growing debate about illegal immigration in this country.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, about 18,000 illegal immigrants cross the border from Mexico everyday. Although these staggering numbers represent a serious issue facing this country, some perspective may be in order.

If we plan on turning America into an exclusive country club, maybe we should first scratch off that sentence on the Statue of Liberty about sending us your tired, huddled masses.

In fact, the French gave that to us. Perhaps we could just dismantle the whole thing and ship it back to them.

Though it pains me to say it, Bush has made the right call on this one.

Canceling a business deal, even one this important, because of the ethnicity of those involved in the transaction would send the wrong message to the world.

Instead of figuring out ways to further isolate ourselves from the world, we should be working on ways to interact more openly with it.

The only thing scarier than George Bush making good decisions would be if we missed an opportunity for even the tiniest shred of reconciliation with the Arab world and instead fanned the flames of discord.

Send comments to Jon at [email protected].