Earlier this week, the Denver Westward News Blog reported that Tom Tancredo got the idea for requiring voters to pass a civics literacy test from “a black guy” driving a limo in Detroit who was studying for his citizenship test. Now, Yeh Ling-Ling, an ethnically Chinese, Vietnam-born, Cambodian-raised, France and Taiwan educated, naturalized U.S. citizen has publicly endorsed Tancredo’s proposal. In an email exchange with reporter Michael Roberts, Yeh wrote:

I believe that in order to be granted U.S. citizenship, immigrants must have a good knowledge of spoken and written English, without any exception. Literacy tests should be given to all U.S. voters — native-born and naturalized citizens alike, so that their votes can accurately reflect their will.

I head a national tax-exempt non-profit organization whose leaders and supporters are racially and politically diverse, including minority immigrants. We do not and may not endorse or oppose political candidates or parties. We believe that some sort of immigration moratorium will be needed so that we can put American job seekers, welfare recipients and non-violent prison inmates to work.

Though the majority of foreign-born U.S. citizens support immigrant-friendly policies, there are always those who would prefer to shut the door behind them. Yeh’s organization believes the U.S. should block further immigration in order to deal with everything from traffic congestion and air pollution to an overall “deteriorating quality of life.” Despite the fact that 89% of Latinos support an earned path to legalization for undocumented immigrants, a small group of Latinos have also started an organization called “You Don’t Speak For Me” in protest of undocumented immigration.

While everyone is entitled to their opinion, it’s troubling that these groups are so quick to ally themselves with individuals and organizations that have repeatedly denigrated their communities and who are transparently exploiting their alliance in order to skirt valid accusations of bigotry and nativism. When it comes to immigration, Tancredo isn’t as concerned about traffic jams and air pollution as he is about “the fate of western civilization.” You Don’t Speak For Me’s official spokesperson isn’t a Latino, it’s Ira Mehlman — a white man who is also curiously the spokesperson for Choose Black America (CBA), a coalition of black leaders opposed to undocumented immigration, and the mostly-white designated hate group, Federation for American Immigration Reform.

The Center for New Community describes these organizations as nothing more than front groups propped by institutions with relatively clear cut anti-immigrant agendas. Ultimately, their peculiar association raises the question of whether these groups are really speaking for themselves. And, if not, then who is?

There is a new conventional wisdom developing that Obama’s engagement policy has failed. Stories on Iran in the mainstream press frequently assert that engagement has failed and the right gleefully boasts that engagement was naïve in the first place. These claims are wrong on two accounts. One of which the Administration argues, in noting that engagement has opened the possibility for international sanctions, something that was impossible during the Bush administration. The other argument however has not really been made, yet it is the most important: the policy of engagement played a critical part in the development of the Green Movement.

This may sound like an argument that is just shrilling for the Obama administration, but without the shift to engagement from Obama it is highly doubtful that such a movement would have materialized. With the Bush administration in office, the United States was not seen as a potential partner. While Iranians may have still supported the concept of engagement with the West during the Bush administration, reformists could hardly motivate large crowds on behalf of engaging with the Bush administration. The bluster-based policy of the Bush administration which described Iran as evil, threatened to bomb them, and invaded both of their neighbors, made it quite easy for the Iranian regime to demonize the United States as the Great Satan and argue plausibly that the obstacle to better relations with the west was a crazy United States not the regime. Being despised matters for US foreign policy.

However, Obama’s election and his calls for engagement, deprived the regime of this argument by making it clear that the United States was not the obstacle to better relations. Obama’s election was met with tremendous hope and optimism globally, including Iran. The President’s outreach to Iran with the address on Iran’s new years and his repeated calls for engagement in his first six months in office, gave momentum to reformists. It sent the signal that a new relationship between Iran and the West was possible.

During the Iranian election there were clear calls to embrace this change, as the Moussavi campaign was filled with slogans and imagery that drew from Obama’s own presidential campaign. Moussavi during the campaign expressed an eagerness “to push for Iran to embrace President Barack Obama’s offer of dialogue after a nearly 30-year diplomatic freeze.” Moussavi noted that “the taboo in this country (Iran) about talking to America has been broken.” During the election, there were numerous reports of Iranians saying they were voting against Ahmadinejad because they wanted better relations with the outside world. For example the LA Times quoted a school teacher saying, “I’m not coming here to vote for anyone. I’m voting against someone. I want a change in the situation. I want better relations with the outside world.” Nick Burns, who served in the State Department under the Bush administration said that engagement put Ahmadinejad “on the defensive” during the election.

After the fraudulent election, the Green Movement became a new force, a force that has had little to do with the actions of the Obama administration. However, what engagement as a policy did in the first six months of 2009 was raise expectations among reform-minded Iranians that there was a chance for a new direction in US-Iranian relations. These raised expectations combined with the fraudulent elections proved a combustible combination.

Hence, US policy of engagement has not failed at all. As Judah Grunstein at World Politics Review argued, “Iran failed, not engagement.” Engagement has made clear to Iranians that it is not the United States, the once Great Satan, keeping them down, but their own regime. Shifting the spotlight from the actions of the US to the actions of the regime may in fact be Obama’s biggest foreign policy accomplishment to date.

On Tuesday, the Missouri State Senate debated President Obama’s call to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) with dueling “non-binding resolutions alternately calling for the repeal and preservation of the military policy.” Both sides regurgitated familiar arguments but State Senator Gary Nodler, who is running in the Republican primary for Rep. Roy Blunt’s (R-MI) seat, carved out a new reason for maintaining the current policy.

Nodler said that “being openly gay in the military ‘in and of itself‘ could be grounds for a sexual harassment complaint by another serviceman, and characterized Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as a way to accommodate gays’ service ‘in a way that doesn’t create a hostile workplace.’” Then, Nodler suggested that allowing openly gay soldiers in the military “could represent a ‘cultural affront‘” to terrorists intent on killing American troops.

“So you would create specific geopolitical strategic dilemmas for the U.S. military — specifically in the war in Afghanistan, ” Nodler said. “There are real-world implications. This is a policy that would directly threaten the lives of soldiers today.” St. Louis Post Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger summed up Nodler’s argument this way:

The Muslim nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, where America is fighting two wars, are opposed to homosexuality. Changing “Don’t ask, don’t tell” would offend the terrorists in such a way that could put soldiers — and America — at risk of further terrorist attacks.

Nodler’s logic is simple: adopt a new nondiscrimination policy and the terrorists win. So, therefore, we should re-segregate the military along sex and racial lines to appease the terrorists?

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

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A common tactic in political writing is to posit two sides of a debate, demonstrate why they are both wrong, and then offer your own much more reasonable argument. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, I’ve used the tactic myself in the past and probably will again in the future.

But in order for this to work, one has to begin by offering an at least somewhat plausible portrayal of the two sides of the debate as they actually exist. I think Trita Parsi and Alireza Nader did a fine job of this in their piece yesterday, in which the authors advocated a “third way” for U.S. policy toward Iran, neither “realism” nor “regime change,” an approach that keeps the onus on the Iranian regime through continued engagement, but also keeps human rights solidly on the agenda in an effort to create space for Iranian reformers.

In contrast, Mark Dubowitz’s piece today — in which he argues that the debate over “targeted” versus “broad-based” sanctions is a false one — does a very poor job, both in defining the positions of the sides, but also in presenting the consensus on the efficacy of sanctions as it actually exists among analysts.

Dubowitz writes that the efficacy of energy sanctions has “been plagued by a bipolar debate“:

Energy sanctions, particularly gasoline sanctions, have been characterized by some as a silver bullet that would cripple the Iranian economy, inflict a mortal wound on the regime, and drive an angry Iranian public to rally around the flag. Others have deplored the sanctions as a pinprick that would cause a mere flesh wound while enriching Chinese and Russian mercantilists at the expense of Europeans and Americans.

Both views are wrong: Energy sanctions are an extension of a comprehensive economic warfare strategy designed to weaken the Revolutionary Guards and feed the flames of discontent.[...]

In the end, “smart” sanctions are those that can cripple the Iranian energy sector — the lifeblood of the men who rule Iran. But both the Obama administration and Congress have an important role to play in achieving this goal; it’s not a question of one approach or the other.

Another point I should have made earlier: If you’re critiquing two opposing arguments in favor of a third option, it helps if your third option isn’t simply a restatement of one of the two positions you’re ostensibly critiquing. Dubowitz’s argument is basically that the debate over “targeted” versus “broad-based” sanctions is false because “broad-based” sanctions are very useful and we should use them. But to make that argument straightforwardly he would actually have to marshal some evidence, and apart from a few assertions, he doesn’t have any.

As I’ve written before, there is a pretty strong consensus among analysts – progressives, centrists, and conservatives — that energy sanctions will be largely useless, if not counterproductive. While they would exact a heavy price on Iran’s population, they would do little to weaken the regime, while at the same enriching the Revolutionary Guards elements who control Iran’s black market. To the extent that that the economic pain felt by the Iranian people translated into more anger at the government, this would likely be overwhelmed by a rally ’round the flag effect.

The only actual Iran expert that Dubowitz does cite for the pro-sanctions argument, Hooman Majd, he does misleadingly. Dubowitz quotes Majd’s book, The Ayatollah Begs To Differ, in which Majd wrote that, among many Iranians, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “was viewed as having both exacerbated the economic crunch and contributed to the sense of insecurity.” This is true, even some Iranian hardliners think Ahmadinejad’s stewardship of the economy has been disastrous, but it simply doesn’t follow that greater economic insecurity will translate into better Iranian behavior. Indeed, Majd himself wrote last September that sanctions “will never force Iran to do what the West demands of it.” Majd may be wrong or right, but it’s baldly dishonest to draft him into the pro-sanctions cause.

As best I can tell, the arguments (or rather assertions) in favor of broad-based sanctions are coming almost exclusively from conservative lobbying groups like the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and conservative think tanks closely aligned with AIPAC, like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, of which Dubowitz is executive director.

It’s worth mentioning, too, that Dubowitz significantly undercuts his own argument right at the outset of the piece. He acknowledges that, because of measures already undertaken by the U.S. Treasury Department, “more than 80 foreign financial institutions [have] terminated or reduced their business with Iran over the past three years,” even though they “were not legally bound to comply with U.S. sanctions.”

But after Treasury revealed Iran’s extensive use of deceptive financial practices and front companies, foreign bankers did so anyway. The benefits of their Iranian business were outweighed by the costs of being linked to bad actors, as well as the real risk of losing access to U.S. financial markets.

As Dubowitz acknowledges, the Obama administration already possesses considerable tools to pressure companies doing business with Iranian regime officials, and has been using those tools to good effect. There are also a number of dual-use sanctions on the books that have been doing a good job frustrating Iran’s nuclear development. Why are even broader sanctions necessary? Dubowitz doesn’t say.