[.cnI redruM]

OK, I'll fess up. I intentionally and mendaciously missed your point because the proper intellectual answer to it is one of life's more unpleasant realities.

The US has always had problematic allies. Sometimes we have to play nicely with people that any rational moralist would describe as ethical @$$-holes. People way worse and more despicable than the current oligarchy honchoing the G's over in UAE.

This is not a good practice, but it is a necessary one. We gave financial aid to Augusto Pinochet. Unfortunately, this wasn't financial aid to send him to an ethics class. It was financial to prop a despicable dictatorship that was one step less vile and inimical than the one Che Guevara would have built in its place.

The world's a crappy place. One in which we need strategically located allies. I wouldn't call the current president of Pakistan a shining example of The Boy Scout Oath. I also wouldn't want to try and run a ground campaign against The Taliban in Afghanistan with his air space in hostile instead of friendly hands.

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

I'm not a Wilsonian.

I have no problem dealing with problematic allies, even those that don't have the same values as us, or other members of the free world.

What I do have a problem with is compromising our security in order to grease the wheels for diplomacy.

Can you say Visa Express?

That's one of the reasons-if not the chief one-that the Twin Towers no longer stand in my city, and why over 2,600 Americans are now deceased.

Short-term political gains are not worth sacrificing our long-term interests, and there is no compelling reason to go through with this deal.

The UAE already has extensive ties to the United States in the economic realm, and our relationship is not going to go to seed simply because they did not get their way on this.

If it does, then it simply illustrates how unreliable our Arab "allies" are.

[ARealMothersSonForever]

This is not a good practice, but it is a necessary one. We gave financial aid to Augusto Pinochet. Unfortunately, this wasn't financial aid to send him to an ethics class. It was financial to prop a despicable dictatorship that was one step less vile and inimical than the one Che Guevara would have built in its place.

Incrementalism is creeping in. What is wrong with saying "no"? We have no obligation to these despots. Look where appeasement got us with Saddam. We looked the other way while he slaughtered the Kurds that WE encouraged. Isolationism is bad. Supporting miscreants is worse.