Today is June 30, the day earmarked by the U.S.-Iraq security agreement for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraqi cities. Despite entreaties from U.S. military commanders to permit exceptions (as allowed in the agreement), Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki chose instead to reject these requests and declare June 30 “National Sovereignty Day.” Some Iraqis took to the streets to celebrate, while Maliki delivered a nationally televised valedictory address. Iraqi security forces are now responsible for security in Iraq, and U.S. combat forces can now only operate with the assent of Iraqi authorities.

Iraq has already seen its first post-withdrawal violence, with at least 15 people reported killed by a car bomb in the contested northern city of Kirkuk. The specter of continued and possibly increased violence in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq’s cities reflects the failure of U.S. strategy to resolve the fundamental intra-Iraqi tensions driving the conflict. While a combination of the surge, the Awakenings, and the marginalization of the Mahdi Army led to today’s low levels of violence, the lack of a political settlement has frozen existing conflicts -– particularly the Sunni-Shia sectarian war and the intra-Shia fight –- while allowing long-standing problems –- namely the Arab-Kurd divide –- to fester.

This reduction in violence has corresponded to an increase in political power for Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. With relatively successful campaigns against the Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad and the successful negotiation of a withdrawal agreement from the United States, Maliki has gone from a weak and ineffectual leader to Iraq’s most powerful political figure and, in the view of some, nascent strongman. Maliki has staked his legitimacy on two pillars –- the ability to achieve security and reclaiming national sovereignty from the United States. Read more

Yesterday, Lamar Smith published an error-ridden editorial in USA Today in which he made a desperately weak case against providing 12 million undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S. a path to legalization. Smith’s first line of reasoning is that the current economic recession would put Americans in a position in which they’re competing with immigrants for jobs. According to Smith, legalizing immigrants would flood the nation’s Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security systems and hurt U.S. taxpayers. However, Smith’s logic is mind-bogglingly flawed on a variety of levels.

To begin with, study after study shows that there is little, if any, relationship between immigration and unemployment rates at the regional, state, or county level. Furthermore, the potential economic benefits of a legalization program have been widely documented. Available research suggests that — had the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 passed — it would have generated a much needed $66 billion in new revenue during 2007-2016 from income and payroll taxes, as well as various administrative fees. Giovanni Peri, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California-Davis, further suggests that immigrants don’t even compete with the majority of natives for the same jobs because they tend to work in different occupations. Smith also sidesteps the argument that by legalizing the undocumented population, the “trap door” that artificially suppresses wages, benefits, and working conditions would be removed so that workers could compete fairly in an above-ground economy.

Smith hysterically claims that a flood of immigrants will flow into the country as soon as “amnesty” is passed and that a harsh policy of “attrition through enforcement” is the best way to deal with the nation’s immigration woes. Yet a study released today by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that the global economic recession is causing an international migration slow-down, echoing the well-documented claim that immigration is primarily driven by economics. Meanwhile, the OECD advises nations like the U.S. to “keep doors open” to immigrant workers in order to meet long-term labor needs. Watch the OECD’s video on the study’s findings:

Smith’s proposed solution of “attrition through enforcement,” a harsh strategy used to “wear down the will” of undocumented immigrants through deportations, detentions, and anti-immigrant ordinances, would cost taxpayers at least $206 billion over five years, or $41.2 billion annually. Finally, Smith cited a 2006 Zogby poll which showed that the majority of Americans prefer harsh enforcement policies that destroy communities, terrorize workers and rip families apart. Three years later, 2009 polling indicates that 68% of voters believe that undocumented immigrants should be required to register, meet conditions, and eventually be allowed to apply for citizenship.

The celebrations taking place in Iraq today marking the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq’s cities and towns provide a pretty explicit picture of how Iraqis have viewed the large U.S. military presence in their country — unfavorably. This is understandable. There’s something inescapably and unalterably repellent about having foreign troops patrolling your country, something that has been too little acknowledged in the American debate about Iraq, but which I suspect we would have no problem understanding were we confronted by machine gun-toting foreigners every time we went down the street for a loaf of bread.

Suggesting that today’s withdrawal “is far more important symbolically than practically,” Marc Lynch notes that “the Obama administration and General Odierno’s team deserve a lot of credit for their careful, rigorous, and publicly affirmed adherence to the agreement.” I think this is right — it’s done an enormous amount for the legitimacy of the Iraqi government that the Obama administration has refused to hedge on the terms of the agreement.

Meanwhile, Michael Rubin relays, in somewhat subtler and therefore more insidious form, the conservative “stab in the back” narrative that Dick Cheney floated yesterday. Rubin warns that today “will likely mark another milestone: the end of the surge and the relative peace it brought to Iraq.”

In the past week, bombings in Baghdad, Mosul and near Kirkuk have killed almost 200 people. The worst is yet to come. [...]

In effect, his strategy is an anti-surge. Troop numbers are not the issue. It is the projection of weakness. Not only Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki but Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani have also reached out to the Islamic Republic in recent weeks.

In Cairo, Mr. Obama said the U.S. had no permanent designs on Iraq and declared, “We will support a secure and united Iraq as a partner, and never as a patron.” Indeed. But until the Iraqi government is strong enough to monopolize independently the use of force, a vacuum will exist and the most violent factions will fill it.

Power and prestige matter. Withdrawal from Iraq’s cities is good politics in Washington, but when premature and done under fire it may very well condemn Iraqis to repeat their past.

As I wrote here yesterday, the war’s supporters hailed the signing of the security agreement as a victory for Bush’s Iraq policy — even if it was essentially an adoption of candidate Obama’s plan. But now we’re apparently to believe that President Obama’s honoring the terms of that agreement is a “projection of weakness” that could endanger the United States.

Rubin also introduces a new element to this argument by implying that Obama’s “weakness” has caused members of Iraq’s government to reach out to neighboring Iran. As Rubin surely knows, and as my colleague Brian Katulis and I wrote about in April 2008, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki President Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, among other Iraqi leaders, have longstanding ties to the Iranian regime — indeed, Talabani was among the very first leaders to congratulate Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his controversial re-election victory. The suggestion that these leaders are only now drawing closer to Iran as a result of the U.S. drawdown is both patently ridiculous and misleading.

While Rubin is of course correct that “power and prestige matter,” it’s typical of the conservative mindset to think that the best way to maintain power and prestige is through the continued, open-ended projection of military force, rather than through the cultivation and support of legitimate domestic governance. President Obama’s honoring of the security agreement is an important step in doing that for Iraq.

On MSNBC last month, Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, a decorated U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who served in both the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters, said he was told last year that he was being discharged under the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, but planned to fight it, hoping that President Obama would quickly change the policy once he assumed office.

Yesterday, the president hosted a meeting commemorating the 40th anniversary of the gay rights movement where he reiterated his desire to end the policy, saying it “doesn’t contribute to our national security.” Appearing again on MSNBC last night, Fehrenbach, who attended the White House meeting yesterday, said that Obama told him privately that a “generational gap” is the biggest obstacle standing in the way of overturning DADT:

FEHRENBACH: I told him the situation for me was urgent and I needed his help. [...] He looked me right in the eye and he said, “We’re going to get this done.” And then he continued to say, you know, everyone seems to be onboard. We’ve got about 75 percent of the public that supports this. He said, but we have a generational issue. And so, there is some convincing to do, that there is a generational gap it seems and some of the senior leadership.

Fehrenbach called it a “reasonable answer,” adding that “the young officers and the young enlisted corps” he works with find this to be a “a non-issue.” “I sort of suspected that maybe the people that were a little bit disconnected were some of the senior leadership,” he said. Watch it:

Fehrenbach said that he “didn’t get the impression” that Obama was just trying to placate the gay community by offering a photo-op with the president for not acting on gay rights issues thus far. “He likened these efforts to the efforts 40, 50 years ago for the African-American community,” he said. “So…this discrimination is something he’s felt his whole life. So, this sounded like it was a personal issue for him, that he really did believe in these causes and wanted, you know, equal rights for all Americans.”

It’s unfortunate for Jackson Diehl that this column, in which he argues for Obama to ease up already on Israel over its past commitments to a settlement freeze, should come out the same day as this story in the New York Times, which reports that “Israel would be open to a complete freeze of settlement building in the West Bank for three to six months as part of a broad Middle East peace endeavor that included a Palestinian agreement to negotiate an end to the conflict and confidence-building steps by major Arab nations, senior Israeli officials said Sunday.”

A settlement “pause” is, of course, far short of what Israel committed to under the roadmap, as Peter Juul pointed out in an earlier post. While the Obama administration should continue to pressure Israel on its obligations, I think we should recognize this proposal, as with Netanyahu’s qualified endorsement of a Palestinian state, as positive (if certainly insufficient) progress.

While a settlement freeze is by no means impossible, there’s no doubt that it will be extremely difficult for Netanyahu with regard to his right-wing, settlements-supporting political coalition. Knowing this, it seems to me that the Obama team has created an excellent incentive for the Israelis to engage in final status talks, determine the final borders of Israel and Palestine, after which time Israel can build all it wants — inside Israel.

Diehl, on the other hand, frets that “the extraction of a freeze from Netanyahu is, as a practical matter, unnecessary.”

While further settlement expansion needs to be curbed, both the Palestinian Authority and Arab governments have gone along with previous U.S.-Israeli deals by which construction was to be limited to inside the periphery of settlements near Israel – since everyone knows those areas will be annexed to Israel in a final settlement.

To call this argument — because the Palestinians have begrudgingly gone along with past agreements under which the U.S. acquiesced to continued Israeli building on Palestinian land, it’s no big deal if Israel just keeps building on Palestinian land — specious really does injustice to the word.

It’s also strange that Diehl would accuse the administration of “raising the stakes” by holding Israel to commitments on settlements — commitments that he does not deny that Israel has made. This bespeaks a pretty cynical view of agreements between the U.S. and its partners. I should think Diehl would be more concerned with the loss of American credibility in the region that has resulted from years of a U.S. “wink, wink” policy toward Israeli settlement building — credibility that Obama is now trying to restore as a necessary first step toward resolving the conflict.

A few days ago, the anti-immigrant group, Numbers USA further relegated itself to the right-wing fringe by denouncing a potential “mainstream” ally, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and his “frightening pro-amnesty” stance. Shortly before President Obama’s Thursday bipartisan meeting on immigration reform, Numbers USA issued an email to its members bashing Cornyn:

“Sen. Cornyn has been making incredibly frightening pro-amnesty statements lately. Only you in Texas can shake him back to some degree of sensibility. Earlier this spring at a Senate hearing, he said that he is in agreement on most immigration issues with Sen. Schumer (the radically pro-amnesty Democrat from New York who chairs the Senate panel on immigration). Then yesterday, the authoritative Capitol Hill newspaper — Roll Call — said Cornyn intends to goad Obama into moving faster to pass comprehensive immigration reform. That terminology almost always means amnesty.”

Numbers USA, rest assured — in Cornyn’s case, his tempered “terminology” means nothing of the such. Though Sen. Cornyn praised Obama for beginning the immigration discussion, this weekend he reassured Texas voters that he strongly opposes “amnesty” in the same breath that he harshly criticized the unproductive agenda of groups like Numbers USA:

“Unfortunately you see groups like that basically are more interested in using money by using fear tactics rather than they are in talking about a subject in a rational and intelligent way…I do oppose amnesty, because I think my constituents in Texas oppose amnesty overwhelmingly. But that’s not to say that there can’t be some practical solution that falls short of amnesty that allows us to improve the status quo.”

Cornyn might want to double check with his constituents, but most polling indicates that the majority of Americans support a path to legalization for the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US. The very health of the GOP largely hinges on the party’s ability to regain the confidence of Latino voters who largely favor immigration reform legislation that contains a legalization component.

Cornyn has instead indicated that the only “practical solution” he is willing to support is a guest worker program — a controversial element of the immigration debate that labor groups strongly oppose. The nation’s two largest labor federations equate any new guest worker program to an “indentured servant” initiative.

The Israeli government has responded again to President Obama’s pressure to freeze all construction in settlements, in accordance with Israel’s obligations under the 2003 roadmap. Unfortunately, the Israeli government doesn’t seem to understand what the word “freeze” means. The New York Times reports today that the Israeli government will propose a conditional suspension of some settlement construction in a meeting between Defense Minister Ehud Barak and U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell today. But this quasi-suspension seems more designed to relieve the pressure the Obama administration is placing on Israel for a settlement freeze than actually fulfill the roadmap obligations.

According to the Times, the Israeli offer will only last three to six months, during which a final status deal with the Palestinians and a broader end to the Arab-Israeli conflict will be negotiated. Construction projects currently under way would not be affected by the Israeli proposal, nor would construction in East Jerusalem. While this offer represents a shift from the Netanyahu government’s earlier stance of allowing “natural growth” in settlements, it’s still a far cry from the complete freeze demanded by both President Obama and the roadmap. Portraying it as a “freeze” when it allows settlement construction currently underway to move forward and excludes East Jerusalem –- the status of which is presumably subject to final status negotiations -– is rhetorical sleight of hand that attempts to portray Israel as being reasonable.

This dishonesty is compounded by reports that Barak’s Defense Ministry approved the construction of 50 new homes in an existing settlement just before Barak came to Washington bearing the Israeli government’s new proposal. This new construction is supposed to give settlers evicted from an illegal outpost homes, but it’s unclear why an existing settlement needs to be expanded to accommodate them. An illegal outpost is dismantled, but its residents are relocated to an existing settlement that will require additional construction in order to house them. Meanwhile, the Israeli defense minister will come to Washington bearing a settlement freeze that isn’t really a freeze.

So far, President Obama has been right to remain steadfast on a complete settlement freeze as outlined in the roadmap. Neither he nor Special Envoy Mitchell should let the Israeli government get away with rhetorical sleight of hand or shell games when it comes to the settlements. The fact that the Netanyahu government has already inched away from its own uncompromising position indicates that the United States can obtain more concessions if it remains firm on the issue.

Tomorrow is the deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq, a date Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is calling a “great victory.” But in a new interview with Washington Times radio, Vice President Cheney was still pushing the U.S. to stay in Iraq, saying that withdrawal would “waste” the sacrifice of U.S. troops:

Mr. Cheney told The Washington Times’ America’s Morning News radio show that he is a strong believer in Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and that the general is doing what needs to be done.

“But what he says concerns me: That there is still a continuing problem. One might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks.

“I hope Iraqis can deal with it. At some point they have to stand on their own. But I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.“

Cheney said that he respects Odierno, who is concerned that there “is still a continuing problem.” Cheney was referencing Odierno’s comments from a CNN interview yesterday. However, Cheney left out the rest of the general’s comments, in which he said that he doesn’t see such “a breakdown in stability” likely to happen:

ODIERNO: Well, again, I think — I think it has to do with if we see a breakdown in stability in Iraq; if we see a consistent increase in violence; if we see that the Iraqi security forces aren’t able to respond; if we have some event that it caused some instability, then that would cause us to, maybe, after we’re asked by the government of Iraq, to help.

I don’t see that right now. I believe we’re on the right path. And I want to make sure you understand that. I believe we are still on the right path. I think security and stability is headed in the right direction as we move through 30 June.

Furthermore, in an interview with CBS yesterday, U.S. ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill said that in “overall trends, you see that violence in this year, ’09, are considerably less. … We think, we are certainly ready to make this move and most importantly we believe the Iraqi forces are ready to take over this mission.”

Cheney has long been fear-mongering on U.S. withdrawal, hoping to keep troops in Iraq as long as possible. In April 2008 he made the misleading claim that al Qaeda would “acquire control” of Iraq’s oil resources if the U.S. left, also compared withdrawal to “betrayal.”

Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress.

Today’s Washington Post report that the Obama administration is preparing an Executive Order on detention authority is a big step in the right direction. Of course some concerns remain about the emerging policy, but many of the specifics outlined in the story — especially criminal prosecutions for future off-battlefield detentions and recognition of the train wreck that would likely come from Congress — are very encouraging. It’s not perfect, but if the Obama administration follows this path, it would be a significant improvement over the Bush administration and would go a long way towards cleaning up the mess at Guantanamo.

After Congress’ pathetic performance during consideration of Guantanamo funding in the supplemental appropriations bill, it is now evident that no matter how well-intentioned the president and some responsible members are, Congress is not a reliable partner. Whatever would emerge from the sausage grinder risks being far worse than even the already unacceptable status quo. One likely outcome from Congress would be the creation of national security courts for suspected terrorists — an option Obama now appears to have rejected — which would build on the errors of the Bush experiment with military commissions and pollute the entire U.S. justice system.

It is important to recognize that President Obama is not avoiding Congressional authorization because Congress has already approved traditional law of war detention in the Authorization to Use Military Force of 2001. The Supreme Court sustained military detention authority of those detainees captured in zones of active combat in 2004 in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, so President Obama is on firm legal ground should he choose to limit military detention to those circumstances.

According to the Post, that is exactly what Obama is considering for any detainees captured in the future:

“Al-Qaeda operatives captured on the battlefield, which the official defined as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and possibly in the Horn of Africa, would be held in battlefield facilities. Suspects captured elsewhere in the world could be transferred to the United States for federal prosecution, turned over to local authorities or returned to their home countries.”

This would be a significant shift from the Bush administration’s policy that swept into U.S. military detention virtually anyone suspected of terrorist activity captured anywhere in the world. It would restore the bright line between criminal and military detention, a crucial distinction to preserve not just in the United States, but also in other countries that look to or use the U.S. as an example. Read more

News from the Middle East has rightly been drowned out by the pro-democracy protests and subsequent crackdown in Iran. Amidst all the attention to Iran, a speech by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad at Al Quds University in the West Bank responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations has been lost in the shuffle. But Fayyad’s speech represents a strong embrace of Palestinian state building as a way of moving forward toward a two state solution, despite the daunting obstacles lying in its path.

In his speech, Fayyad called on Palestinians to “unite around the project of establishing a state and to strengthening its institutions… so that the Palestinian state becomes, by the end of next year or within two years at most, a reality.”

This schedule is extremely ambitious, given that any attempt to build Palestinian state institutions will face the everyday obstacles of the occupation – checkpoints, the separation wall, closures, and the like – as well as the likely hostility of the current Israeli government. While the United States Security Coordinator under Gen. Keith Dayton is currently working to build coordinate the building of professional Palestinian security forces, the United States will have to lead a more robust diplomatic effort to both ease the problems the occupation poses to state building and provide the necessary support to the Palestinian Authority to actually build the necessary state institutions.

In other words, the United States needs to get Israel to trust that the Palestinian Authority can effectively govern and control the West Bank. It’s ironic that this situation exists, considering Israel apparently trusts Hamas – the group that’s committed to Israel’s destruction – to run the Gaza Strip, while not affording the same trust to the PA, which has been negotiating on the basis of the two-state solution since the early 1990s. Via the USSC, the United States has played a valuable role in soothing some Israeli fears about Palestinian security forces, but more could be done on a broader scale.

What Fayyad is proposing will require a crash program that both builds long-term institutions while ameliorating current conditions in the West Bank. These two efforts are complementary, given that effective state institutions will be worthless if they’re unable to function properly due to the restrictions imposed by the fact of the occupation. Working out a realistic plan for Palestinian state building in Fayyad’s timeframe will require coordination between the United States, the PA, and Israel, as well as coordination between executive departments and agencies and Congress and the White House here in Washington. Senator Mitchell’s team will have its work cut out for it. Read more

John F. Kennedy once said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” JFK was speaking about Latin America in the wake of the Cuban revolution in the early 1960s, but the broader point he made – that disallowing non-violent political and social change ultimately undermines those who seek to prevent it – still stands today. Roger Cohen’s indefatigable reporting from Tehran over the last several days makes it clear that no matter how the current unrest pans out, the regime’s days are numbered: “All the fudge that allowed a modern society to coexist with a society inspired by an imam occulted in the 9th century has been swept away, leaving two Irans at war.”

Up until now, the regime has been able to survive so long because of its relative flexibility. Khomeini continued the slaughter of the Iran-Iraq war for six years beyond the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Iran, but agreed to a UN cease-fire after becoming convinced the United States was about to intervene more directly after the accidental shoot-down of an Iranian airliner in 1988. He ruefully called his acceptance of the cease-fire resolution “more deadly than taking poison.” His successor, the current Supreme Leader Khamenei, allowed a reformist, Mohammad Khatami, to win the presidency twice, but undermined his efforts toward liberalizing Iranian society and politics whenever he and the conservative establishment could.

Apparently Khamenei couldn’t face the prospect of another reformer winning power, no matter how moderate and committed to the system, and decided to fix the election. But he didn’t count on hundreds of thousands of average Iranians wanting their votes to mean something and demonstrating in the streets of major cities to make sure they did. Even then, though, the regime could have showed flexibility and maintained the general contours of the system. After all, the main challenger, Mir Hussein Mousavi, has solid credentials as a member of that system, and the framed his objections to the rigged vote in the context of fidelity to the 1979 revolution’s ideals.

Mousavi’s framing and the recent bloody crackdown have probably done deep damage to the regime’s legitimacy. Khamenei prevented President Khatami from making any real changes to the Iranian system when he was in power from 1997 to 2005, and prevented Mousavi, a committed disciple of the revolution, from winning the presidency by the system’s own rules. And when Iranians then protested peacefully and framed their demands in accordance with the system, Khamenei denounced them and then sicced the state’s security forces on them. What the Supreme Leader and his allies have done is made peaceful change within the regime’s system impossible. Read more

Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

As I’ve written on the Center’s website and posted on Foreign Policy.com, I’ve been on a trip to Israel, the West Bank, and Jerusalem for the past week and a half, and yesterday afternoon I had a dizzying experience in the span of a few hours. The second part of my trip is with a delegation organized by Academic Exchange, in partnership with the Milken Institute and the Yitzhak Rabin Center, and we have had an excellent set of meetings.

Thursday afternoon, we went from the controversial Israeli settlement Ofra to meetings just a few miles down the road in Ramallah with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Saeb Erekat, a chief Palestinian negotiator for years. Then we headed back into Jerusalem, where we got stuck in traffic due to heavy security for a gay pride parade, which, unlike previous years, fortunately was held without any violence.

Our afternoon started out in Ofra with a discussion by Israel Harel, a leading Israeli settler and columnist in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. With about 3,000 residents, Ofra is a settlement northeast of Ramallah in the West Bank — it was one of the first settlements set up by the Gush Emunim movement in the 1970s. It is currently at the center of a legal and political battle inside of Israel over certain parcels of land and housing units — at a time when the United States and other countries have placed a higher priority on the settlement question.

This article outlines the issues at play in the most recent legal case involving Ofra. Israel’s Ministry of Justice confirmed land that the World Zionist Organization, acting as an agent for the Israeli government, leased to a family in Ofra, even though the leased land was actually Palestinian private property. The case is still pending in Israel’s Supreme Court, and it has several complicated wrinkles, like many other similar cases. And this is just one case — some Israeli groups have raised broader questions about the legality of other parts of Ofra, which is distant from the Green Line between the West Bank and Israel and is connected to Jerusalem by a road built for Israeli settlers.

As Harel gave us a tour of the settlement, he had some strong words to say about the Obama administration’s recent push to get a settlement freeze, which he strongly opposed (no big surprise there). Harel said he was worried that Obama was spending so much time learning the names of things like a small settlement outpost that Obama mentioned in a recent public statement. In his view, with the situation in Afghanistan and threats like a nuclear Pakistan, he thought the American president’s focus on small settlement outposts was misplaced. Read more

Yesterday, the Center for American Progress released a report detailing a clear, realistic, and comprehensive road map for repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the discriminatory ban on gay men and women serving openly in the military. The steps include:

1. Signing an Executive Order banning further military separations based on DADT and sending a legislative proposal on DADT repeal to Congress

2. Forming a presidential panel on how to implement the repeal

3. Repealing DADT in Congress and changing the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, or UCMS

4. Changing other necessary military guidelines to conform to the new policy

5. Following-up to ensure that the armed forces implement the policy changes

In today’s press briefing, David Corn of Mother Jones asked White House spokesman Robert Gibbs about the report and whether the Obama administration thinks this is “the way to go.” Gibbs largely dismissed CAP’s recommendations, saying that the White House is not interested in signing an executive order to temporarily halt DADT:

GIBBS: Well, the President has had meetings about this, has talked with members of Congress. His staff has talked with members of Congress. All of them have talked to Pentagon officials and the administration believes that this requires a durable, legislative solution, and is pursing that in Congress.

Q: I understand that for the long-term solution, but what do you take issue with about signing an executive order that will suspend the separations before an endurable solution is reached through the slow legislative process?

GIBBS: I mean, I think there could be differences on strategy. I think our belief is that the only and best way to do this is through a durable, comprehensive legislative process.

Watch it:

ThinkProgress spoke with CAP Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb, one of the authors of the report, who reiterated that it’s essential for Obama to suspend the dismissals of gay men and women while working on a long-term solution with Congress:

We agree on the need for a durable legislative solution. But a presidential suspension on further dismissals on the basis of DADT is not only within the authority of the president but is necessary to begin the process of repealing this counterproductive, costly, and unnecessary law.

Read the full report here.

Transcript: Read more

The Senate has yet to confirm a number of President Obama’s nominees to various State Department posts. One of those nominees, Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) — a champion of repealing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy — has had a hold placed on her nomination to become Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. But the hold on her nomination is not anonymous, as Foreign Policy’s Laura Rozen reports:

A blanket hold placed late last week by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) on all State Department nominees appears to have been lifted on Saturday, administration sources tell The Cable. Kyl’s only remaining hold, The Cable was told, is on Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), President Obama’s nominee to be under secretary of state for arms control and international security.

Kyl’s office confirmed his remaining hold on Tauscher’s nomination. “He honestly has made no guise of his hold on her nomination,” spokesman Ryan Patmintra told The Cable Monday.

When asked why Kyl is placing a hold on Tauscher, a spokesperson said, “He expressed privately to the administration his concerns. He has chosen not to discuss them publicly.” Indeed, Kyl’s office did not respond to an inquiry from ThinkProgress.

But last week, Rozen reported that Capitol Hill sources said Kyl “is not satisified with the information he has been receiving from the administration on the progress of arms control negotiations with Russia”:

“Kyl’s beef and the general Republican argument now emerging against the Obama administration’s nuclear weapons policy is that they are rushing to conclude a new agreement with Russia on strategic arms levels before their Nuclear Posture Review [NPR] is complete,” a Democratic congressional source said.

However, the Obama administration has to move quickly because the arms control agreement with Russia — the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), a verification regime signed in 1991 — expires on Dec. 5. The Obama administration has made no secret of wanting warmer relations with Russia. In recent negotiations, both nations have expressed interest in “much deeper cuts in strategic arsenals than those achieved by START when it came into force.”

Nuclear non-proliferation expert Joseph Cirincione told ThinkProgress, “Senator Kyl wants to delay any arms reductions until the Nuclear Posture Review, then work the process so the NPR makes only minor changes to the existing nuclear arsenal.”

Indeed, if Obama makes a deal with Russian President Medvedev to drastically reduce nuclear stockpiles, Kyl — who is against reducing America’s nuclear weapons — won’t have much of an opportunity to challenge it. Kyl would rather play domestic politics with the NPR and have a chance at limiting nuclear reductions before any U.S.-Russia binding agreement. Thus, it appears Kyl is using the NPR as an excuse to block U.S. negotiations with Russia, and is holding up Tauscher’s nomination as blackmail.

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, a Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The Center for a New American Security recently released a report entitled “After the Fire,” detailing what the authors think the U.S. relationship with Iraq should be after the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. There is little controversial or bold in the report for reasonable readers to disagree with — the basic thrust is that the United States should remain diplomatically engaged in Iraq after 2011 as it would in any other important post-conflict country with which it has diplomatic relations. Beyond this banal main point, the report suggests that the United States might maybe keep a number of adviser troops in Iraq beyond 2011 -– which is something of a CNAS hobbyhorse -– but political realities in Iraq (which the authors themselves point out) make such a development exceedingly unlikely.

But the report does suffer from two main flaws, one specific to the topic and another afflicting DC policy reports in general. First, the report doesn’t mention Iraqi refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs). These people will have to be dealt with one way or another, either by returning them to their homes or by resettling them elsewhere in Iraq or overseas. Either way, refugees and IDPs present a tremendous political problem for the Iraqi government –- one that could spark renewed violence if handled improperly. And if Iraqis choose or are forced to resettle overseas, the brain drain preventing Iraq’s economy from rebuilding itself will become permanent. This oversight is glaring given the relatively common-sensical main recommendations of the report.

More broadly, though, the CNAS report reflects a major problem with DC foreign policy reports -– assuming away strategic questions while focusing on operational and tactical issues. For instance, the report asserts that we have a “strategic imperative of establishing an enduring relationship with a key country in a region of vital importance to the United States” without establishing why this is so. It may be true, but no one actually argues why. Maybe we don’t have to have an “enduring relationship” with Iraq for it to be stable. Maybe we do, but DC discussions don’t really go beyond the assertion that this sort of relationship is necessary.

Moreover, the authors assert “the primary objective and guiding principle of U.S. Middle East policy must be to keep the region politically stable and secure in order to protect American allies in the region and avoid sudden disruptions in the supply of energy resources.” Which is well and good, but it really begs a broader US Middle East policy which isn’t really found beyond faint outlines in a report that, after all, focuses on Iraq. To my eyes, at least, it seems like the report’s goals for Iraq are informing the overall regional strategy (such as it is) rather than the other way around. This sort of thinking is all too common in various DC foreign policy reports -– there’s little questioning of overall U.S. strategy and too much focus on questions of technique.

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Last week, over the objections of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Obama administration, the House Armed Services Committee restored funding for the basically useless F-22 fighter jet, in the process stripping funding for nuclear waste cleanup efforts. Last night, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) filed an amendment to restore the waste cleanup funds and eliminate the money for the F-22. The move came after months of Republicans issuing dire warnings about the consequences of suspending the F-22 program: Frank Gaffney, for example, declared it would lead to “diminished military capability, emboldening enemies, and alienating our friends.”

On a press call hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund this afternoon, Frank pointed out Republicans’ hypocrisy in railing against the deficit while simultaneously funding a $2 billion air force jet that has never once flown a mission in Afghanistan or Iraq. Frank said so-called deficit hawks act as though the Pentagon is funded with “Monopoly money”:

I am of course struck that so many of my colleagues who are so worried about the deficit apparently think the Pentagon is funded with Monopoly money that somehow doesn’t count.

Frank also dismissed concerns that eliminating the F-22 will cost jobs:

These arguments will come from the very people who denied that the economic recovery plan created any jobs. We have a very odd economic philosophy in Washington: It’s called weaponized Keynesianism. It is the view that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.

Listen to it:

Indeed, conservatives declare that canceling the F-22 would result in thousands of lost jobs. However, as Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb pointed out on the call, the administration has also ramped up production of the F-35, which is produced at many of the same facilities — and by the same workers — as the F-22.

Frank called the F-22 fight an important “test” for the Obama administration’s efforts to cut wasteful military spending. “If we cannot hold the line on this, then it’s very bad news for trying to hold down any kind of excesses in military spending,” he said.

Yesterday, Media Matters highlighted statements made by “shock-jock” radio host Michael Savage on his Friday show in which he lashed out at immigrant “gang-bangers” for “destroying California.” Savage, whose inflammatory rhetoric recently got him banned from entering the U.K., vowed that only God himself will shut him up:

SAVAGE: The illegals [immigrants] have destroyed the state of California. They’ve sucked it dry like lemons. They’ve sucked it dry. Free medical, free schooling, knocking out babies like tasty bread. What do you want me to say it’s not true? What do you think I’m blind? You think they’re going to reign me in? You think those people on the left are going to scare me into not telling you what’s real? I’m never going to stop. God will stop me, not you. Go walk around and see who’s having the babies in the state of California–14 year-old-gang-banger children are knocking them out like tasty bread.

Savage proceeded to victimize California white males for carrying the economic burden of the state:

SAVAGE: Go blame everybody. Go blame the white male who makes the money in the state. Blame the white male who makes all the money in the state for bankrupting the state. Go ahead.

Listen:

California’s budget crisis is no white man’s burden and white males certainly aren’t the only individuals contributing to the state economy. Immigrants have been called the “super-stars” of California’s profitable high-tech industry. Google, Ebay, and Intel were all started by California’s immigrants.

And while Savage might like to think that most of California’s immigrant population is busy robbing grandmas and pushing baby carriages all day long, immigrants — both legal and illegal — make up more than 1/3 of California’s labor force. In fact, according to economist Giovanni Peri of the University of California, immigrant workers complement native-born California workers and most native-born Californians have experienced wage gains as a result. While there is a cost associated with immigrants and their children — as there is with any individual who lives and goes to school in the United States — California’s immigrants pay roughly $30 billion in federal taxes, $5.2 billion in state income taxes, and $4.6 billion in sales taxes each year.

Most sources attribute California’s budget shortfall to the state’s long-term investment projects that rely heavily on income taxes during a time of high unemployment and the state’s inability to pass workable solutions due to the political stalemate caused by the complicated state legislative system.

The deceptively named anti-immigrant front group, Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), released a set of counter-intuitive polling data today suggesting that while over half of 600 polled liberals support a pathway to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US, they also see immigration as an economic, social, and environmental liability.

The anti-immigration movement has long been trying to woo progressives by exploiting pro-labor and environmental arguments to make the case against immigrants. The Center for New Community’s (CNC) Eric Ward warns:

“PFIR is simply another addition to a growing list of anti-immigrant groups being set up under the Tanton Network to give the illusion that the anti-immigrant movement is broader than it really is. This network of organizations is named after white nationalist John Tanton the founder and key leader in a network of anti-immigrant organizations, spin-offs and front groups. Key entities include Center for Immigration Studies, Social Contract Press, and the Coalition for the Future American Worker.”

PFIR’s Executive Director Leah Durant is listed as the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (FAIR) Legal Analyst. Frank Morris, PFIR’s vice president, is also a board member of the Center for Immigration Studies and sits on FAIR’s national board of advisors. According to the CNC, PFIR’s “sister group,” the House Immigration Reform Caucus, chaired by Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray (CA), has an abominable voting record on environmental and labor issues.

According to the poll, 67% of liberals/progressives feel that immigration causes population growth which “negatively impacts the quality of life.” 58% feel that immigration is environmentally harmful and 63% think immigration hurts American workers. Yet over half support a pathway to citizenship.

PFIR’s confusing findings might also have something to do with their polling company, “Pulse Opinion Research,” the favored pollster of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a group which was recently pinned for fueling hate crimes with its anti-immigrant rhetoric and the Eagle Forum, a “pro-family” organization that opposes the “liberal agenda,” “radical feminists,” and supports “American identity.” The pollster has also been used to promote the presidential bids of Libertarian candidates Bob Barr and George Phillies. Yet, while Pulse Opinion Research’s findings were used to predict the relative success of Barr and Phillies, Phillies lost his bid for the Libertarian Party’s nomination to Barr who only won 0.4% of the national vote — compared to the 7% win that Pulse Opinion Research predicted.

Most immigration polling backs the claim that the majority of Americans support a legalization program for undocumented immigrants. Yet, it’s hard to find any polling that shows the same respondents holding immigrants responsible for the nation’s woes. According to a Benenson Strategy Group poll, 71% of 1,000 likely voters said that immigrants are not responsible for taking American jobs. A poll conducted by Bendixon and Associates for the progressive think tank, the New Democratic Network (NDN), found that 60% of voters in four battleground states echoed similar views. Both surveys were bi-partisan polls that consistently showed Democrats leaning towards pro-immigrant views and solutions. None of polls connected immigration to environmental or population growth concerns, however the progressive Green Party itself specifically condemns scapegoating immigrants for social and environmental problems:

“While we recognize that there must be some controls on immigration, if only for the sake of national security, the Green Party would endorse a friendlier (less intimidating) attitude towards immigration in all nations within certain guidelines…We oppose those who seek to divide us for political gain by raising ethnic and racial hatreds, and by blaming immigrants for social and economic problems.”

Polling data aside, US government scientists say there’s insufficient evidence to draw any clear conclusion on immigration’s impact on the environment.