Leaving aside the so-frequent-they’re-barely-newsworthy conservative meltdown over President Obama’s receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, I think the president’s remarks today represent something of a missed opportunity.

It’s pretty clear that the Nobel committee intended the award both as a slap at the Bush administration — well deserved, to be sure — and as a bit of high-profile lobbying of President Obama: “We like what we’ve seen so far, keep it up.” But rather than simply humbly accepting the award, and the challenge implicit in its being given, it would have been great if the president had used his speech to turn that challenge on the international community: “Thanks for the prize. You like what I’m doing? Great. I’m trying to close Gitmo — you can help me by accepting detainees. I’m trying to turn around a failing international effort in Afghanistan — you can step up with more support. Also, an international treaty on climate change, nuclear non-proliferation, Arab-Israeli peace — these are areas where you can help me fulfill the potential that you’ve acknowledged with this award.”

In other words, we could’ve used a bit more of what the President had in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly:

This cannot be solely America’s endeavor. Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone. We have sought – in word and deed – a new era of engagement with the world. Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.

Only now he can say this while tapping a big shiny medal on the podium.

Earlier this year, Arizona’s controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio exploited the H1N1 “swine flu” scare to argue that it should “underscore the need for illegal immigration enforcement.” Today, GQ has posted a piece by Alexander Provan in which the Sheriff suggests that undocumented immigrants should be checked like “fruits and vegetables” because they are “diseased” and “dirty”:

“All these people that come over, they could come with disease. There’s no control, no health checks or anything. They check fruits and vegetables, how come they don’t check people? No one talks about that! They’re all dirty. I sent out 200 inmates into the desert, they picked up 18 tons of garbage that they bring in—the baby diapers and all that. Where’s everybody who wants to preserve the desert?”

Whether he’s an “idiot savant” or the “Bull Connor of our generation,” Arpaio’s hardline anti-immigrant rhetoric and controversial immigration enforcement tactics have allowed him to make a name for himself. However, Provan points out that Arpaio’s convictions against undocumented immigrants weren’t always so strong. In 2005, Army reservist Patrick Haab was arrested by Arpaio’s men for holding seven suspected undocumented immigrants face down in the desert at gunpoint. Haab was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. According to Provan, at the time Arpaio held that “being illegal is not a serious crime. You can’t go to jail for being an illegal alien.” Arpaio told the Arizona Republic’s Michael Kiefer:

“I want the authority to lock up smugglers, but I am not going to lock up illegals hanging around street corners. I’m not going to waste my resources going after a guy in a truck when he picks up five illegals to go trim palm trees.”

Haab was never prosecuted thanks to a legal loophole found by the newly elected county attorney at the time — Andrew Thomas — who had run on an anti-immigrant platform. Thomas made national headlines and appeared on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes “to brag about what he’d done” and Arpaio learned his lesson.

Four years later, Haab could just sign up for Arpaio’s posse program which allows regular armed citizens to hunt down undocumented immigrants as long as they can provide their own weapons and pass a 160 hour law enforcement class. Arpaio loves to brag about locking up 32,000 supposedly “diseased” immigrants for smuggling themselves across the border, even though it meant creating a $1.3 million deficit in just three months. Provan notes that Arpaio brushes off the fact that he hasn’t caught any major smugglers or kingpins because going after gardners and dishwashers helps him make sure he doesn’t “lose touch with the street.”

Arpaio has made his own national headlines recently due to his theatrical response to the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to change his agreement with federal immigration authorities in way that will only allow him to check the immigration status of his inmates, not enforce immigration law on the streets of Maricopa County. ICE head John Morton has yet to officially sign off.

Our guest blogger is Oren Ipp, a Senior Advisor to the Afghanistan Public Policy Research Organization and a Fellow of the Truman National Security Project.

As President Obama meets with advisers to decide whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, questions abound regarding the legitimacy of the government the U.S. is trying to support. How the debacle of the August 20 presidential election is resolved could very well provide the answers the administration is looking for.

Looking at Afghanistan’s recent election, it appears that sometimes the remedy can be worse than the ailment. While the ailment — a fraudulent election — threatens to undermine the credibility of the country’s democratic experiment, the remedy — a run-off election — may in fact inflict greater harm. While prevailing wisdom demands a second vote, is it really in Afghanistan’s best interest?

The case for a second round is strong. The Election Complaints Commission (ECC), the joint Afghan-international body charged with investigating electoral irregularities, has ordered recounts at more than 2,500 polling stations after it found “clear and convincing evidence of fraud.” The European Union alleged that up to 1.5 million ballots out of 6 million could be fraudulent.

Senior officials from the international community have also expressed serious reservations about the legitimacy of the election. Most importantly, Afghan voters themselves are questioning the credibility of the election, sapping what little faith they have left in the current government.

Popular attitudes are marked by a widespread belief that the Independent Election Commission (IEC), which oversees the ECC and whose senior officials are all appointees of current President Hamid Karzai, is anything but independent. It appeared that the ECC was taking its independent mandate seriously until it decided to examine only a statistical sample of contested ballots: just 10% of the total. This may lead many Afghans to perceive the work of the ECC as biased.

Should the ECC find that fraud did not significantly alter the results of the election, President Karzai would avoid a run-off. But given the public’s discontent with the electoral process, he would enter his second term in office with a serious legitimacy deficit. Considering the circumstances, it is difficult to imagine how an administration elected in this fashion would be able to govern effectively. Read more