During today’s SCHIP debate, Republican Senators tried to block efforts to overturn a provision that currently subjects most legal permanent residents to a five-year ban on eligibility for Medicaid and SCHIP.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced an amendment that strikes the immigrant provision and increases “the enrollment of uninsured low income American children.” Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) amendment similarly prohibits coverage of non-citizen children until a state demonstrates “that it has enrolled 95 percent of the children eligible for Medicaid or CHIP who reside in the State and whose family income does not exceed 200 percent of the poverty line.”

A lot of this is political posturing. Denying Democrats a victory, rallying the base, but ultimately alienating thousands of soon-to-be citizen voters:

HATCH: I simply cannot support a CHIP bill that allows states to cover legal immigrant children when there are 6 million at the 200% level and below eligible for CHIP and Medicaid. These children ought to be our first priority. [Senate floor, 1/27/2009]

KYL: The bill would add “huge costs” to the SCHIP program at a time when “we acknowledge that we can’t even pay for things like, for example, the physician update, every year, whereby American doctors take care of American citizens in the Medicare program.” [NPR, 1/27/2009]

In their effort to divide and conquer, conservatives are rowing their boats against the tide of popular opinion and logic, hoping to sidetrack a conversation about health care into a debate about immigration. Why must we choose between expanding the program to cover more children and ensuring that eligible children enroll in greater numbers? Why can’t we do both simultaneously?

We can. In fact, if conservatives were truly interested in expanding children’s health care they would be focusing their efforts on simplifying the application process, funding outreach and enrollment efforts and providing incentives for states to encourage greater enrollment.

For one, providing health care coverage to immigrant children is extremely popular. According to a poll commissioned by First Focus, 67 percent of Americans “favor eliminating the five-year waiting period for legal immigrant children.”

And the investment is well worth it. Forcing immigrant children to go five years without affordable insurance only increases SCHIP’s costs once the now sicker children become eligible for insurance. The current ban has contributed to “higher costs for emergency room visits and poorer health outcomes”, “exacerbated the disparity in health coverage between immigrants and native citizens,” contributed to the increasing uninsured rates among immigrants, and “shifted the burden of covering this population to sates and local safety net providers.”

Yesterday, President Obama sat down with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television for his first formal interview in office. The interview was notable not only for the substance of Obama’s remarks, but also for the symbolism of directly reaching out to Muslims so early in his presidency. Obama said that his job “to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.”

Host Hisham Melhem noted that President Bush had framed the struggle against extremism as a “war on terror,” using terminology like “Islamic fascism” to describe America’s adversary. “You’ve always framed it in a different way,” Melhem said. Obama then talked about the advantages of shifting away from Bush’s language:

OBAMA: I think that you’re making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations — whether Muslim or any other faith in the past — that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name.

“But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship,” Obama added. Watch it:

Indeed, a Pentagon funded RAND study last year recommended that the U.S. do away with its “war on terror” terminology as the strategy behind it was “not successful in undermining al Qai’da’s capabilities.” The report said it also “encourages others abroad to respond by conducting a jihad (or holy war) against the United States and elevates them to the status of holy warriors.”

As the Washington Post noted, Bush’s “war on terror” came to an end this week, with Obama signing executive orders eliminating torture, rendition and indefinite detention. “We intend to win this fight,” he said. “We’re going to win it on our terms.”

Moreover, Obama has made a number of bold maneuvers indicating his intention to extend a hand of friendship — and not just more guns — toward Muslim nations:

– Called out to Muslims in his inauguration speech: “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” Obama said.

– First international phone call was to Abbas: “This is my first phone call to a foreign leader and I’m making it only hours after I took office,” Obama told Palestinian President Abbas.

– Appointed George Mitchell as ambassador: Obama appointed Mitchell as his top diplomatic envoy to the Middle East. Mitchell is considered “fair” and “meticulously even-handed” in the Israeli/Palestinian debate.

– Will give a speech to the Muslim world: Obama’s aides say he is likely to make a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office.

Naturally, Commentary calls the interview “seriously ill-advised.” The American Spectator’s Quin Hillyer’s wrote a post titled, “This…Blows…My…Mind.” But this new posture is indicative of why Obama has such strong support from Muslims abroad and why al Qaeda is rendered “nervous” by his international stature.

Last night on the O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly blasted Afghan President Hamid Karzai for appealing to U.S. forces to do more to limit civilian casualties in Afghanistan. O’Reilly chastised Karzai, calling his appeal “insulting” and suggesting that Afghans are ungrateful for the support they receive from U.S. and NATO forces:

OREILLY: U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan are risking their lives to protect the Afghan people from the Taliban and al Qaeda. But President Karzai does not seem to get that. Once again, he has condemned American forces after a raid killed some civilians.

In that raid, a top Taliban commander and some of his cronies were also killed, but apparently, Karzai doesn’t understand that in war, collateral damage is constantly present. U.S. military is investigating the situation, but Check believes Karzai is making a political grandstand play, and it is insulting. Without us, his head is on a stick.

Watch it:

O’Reilly was referring to a recent air strike that the U.S. military claims killed 15 Taliban fighters, but that Karzai claims killed 16 civilians. While the investigation is ongoing, O’Reilly’s blanket condemnation of Karzai’s concern for civilian deaths misses the broader point: American success in Afghanistan depends on reducing civilian casualties there.

U.S. and NATO forces are increasingly reliant on air strikes to prosecute its counterinsurgency objectives in Afghanistan. As Human Rights Watch explained, “There has been a massive and unprecedented surge in the use of air power in Afghanistan in 2008,” resulting in higher civilian death rates. According to the latest U.N. figures, foreign forces in Afghanistan were responsible for the deaths of 577 civilians in 2008 “including 395 deaths caused by airstrikes” — a 40 percent increase over the previous year.

This increase in civilian casualties has “dramatically decreased public support for the Afghan government and the presence of international forces.” As Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it to the congressional testimony today, “civilian casualties are doing [U.S. interests] enormous harm in Afghanistan“:

I will tell you that I believe the civilian casualties are doing us enormous harm in Afghanistan. And we have got to do better in terms of avoiding casualties. I say that knowing full well the Taliban mingle among the people, use them as barriers, but when we go ahead and attack, we play right into their hands. … My worry is that the Afghans come to see us as part of the problem rather than part of their solution and then we are lost.

Ignoring the increasing levels of “collateral damage” — as O’Reilly appears to recommend — is not only unethical, it would further empower the very forces that U.S. and NATO forces are attempting to defeat.