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.”