The Nuclear Security Summit is the largest gathering of heads of state in Washington since world leaders assembled to create the United Nations more than 60 years ago. While that summit focused on setting up an international system to prevent another catastrophic conflict, this week’s gathering is similarly intended to prevent another even more catastrophic terror attack.

Yet most don’t really seem to get what all the hubbub is about. Much of this is because of over the last decade rarely been put on the American public’s or the international communities’ radar. Despite saying during the 2004 Presidential debate that nuclear terror was the gravest threat, the Bush administration placed little emphasis on these issues and failed to lead an adequate global effort to confront them. As Gareth Evans, former Australian Foreign Minister and co-chair of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation, noted at an NGO conference today on nuclear security, there has been a “decade of international sleepwalking on these issues.”

But this is about combating the most serious national security threat in the post-Cold War: the growing danger of a terrorist blowing up a major global city. Some dismiss the danger, but the fact is that nuclear materials around the world are often poorly guarded and secured. There have been multiple cases of theft and we know that well-funded terror groups like Al Qaeda are after nuclear materials. Once nuclear materials are acquired, these can be easily shipped to the US or Europe in shipping containers –spotty and limited screening makes detection unlikely. And once in the target country a crude device can be constructed to build a nuclear bomb that doesn’t require all that much expertise.

This is why many experts talk about a nuclear terror attack in terms of “when” not “if”. Former Ambassador Robert Gallucci speaking at the NGO summit noted that while its not easy, “It is possible, plausible, and over time probable” that a well funded terrorist could build a useable nuclear device.

But nuclear terrorism has also been called the “ultimate preventable catastrophe,” since a terror group is going to have to either buy or steal existing nuclear materials or a weapon. The way to prevent this then is to make sure all this stuff is locked down.

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The day before yesterday, the idea that America is a work-in-progress, an unfinished experiment, a project that Americans are constantly striving to improve and perfect, was considered uncontroversial, even laudable.

Yesterday, however, President Obama expressed this idea, remarking to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev that the United States is still “working on” democracy. So, of course, today conservatives find this outrageous.

Peter Wehner, the Bush administration’s former minister of “intellectual seriousness,” goes an extra step, though. Writing that the president’s words are “of a piece with Obama’s unprecedented criticisms of America since he took office,” Wehner concludes that “Our president simply doesn’t hold this nation in very high esteem.”

Now, it seems pretty obvious to me that, in order to believe Barack Obama would go to all the trouble of running for president of a country he just didn’t like very much, one either has to be A) incredibly stupid, or B) there is no B. In order to write such a thing, however, one just has to be a shameless hack.

This isn’t the first time Wehner has charged those with whom he disagrees with harboring animosity toward their own country. Back in October 2008, Wehner suggested that those Bush critics who refused to interpret the surge as a vindication of the Iraq war were motivated by “an ideological antipathy not just to an American President, but to America’s cause.”

For someone who has condemned Glenn Beck’s googly-eyed paranoia as “harmful to the conservative movement,” Wehner is clearly at ease about trafficking in similar paranoia when he can’t think of anything else. Wehner wrote that Beck’s claim that President Obama had a “deep-seated hatred for white people” was “quite unfair and not good for the country.” I don’t see how claiming that the President of the United States doesn’t like the United States very much is any better.

One of the sillier conservative talking points these days is the idea that, under President Obama, America is being mean to its allies while appeasing its enemies. The most common comparison that’s trotted out is Obama’s attempt to dial down U.S.-Iran tensions in order to engage the Iranian regime over its nuclear program while at the same ratcheting up pressure on Israel’s government to cease its illegal settlement activity.

Speaking at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans on Thursday, Liz Cheney sought to illustrate this point with specific regard to President Obama’s pressuring Afghan President Hamid Karzai to crack down on government corruption by referencing what she claimed was “a saying in the Arab world: ‘It is more dangerous to be America’s friend than to be her enemy.’”

While one is usually on safe ground simply assuming that whatever comes out of Liz Cheney’s mouth is false, it’s worth noting that this particular statement is false in three different ways. First, and most obviously, Hamid Karzai is not Arab, nor is Afghanistan part of “the Arab world.” Second, this particular “saying” is actually one that originated with that well-known Arab sage Henry Kissinger (“it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal”), in reference to wavering U.S. support for the Vietnamese government in the late 1960s.

Third, and most significantly, is the ridiculous idea — echoed, of course, by Sarah Palin — that the U.S. using public pressure on its partners in order to get them to behave in ways that better serve U.S. interests is somehow outside the boundaries of acceptable foreign policy behavior. Afghan government corruption is a huge problem for U.S.-led coalition’s goals in Afghanistan. After months and years of private cajoling, Karzai has shown little enthusiasm for dealing with it, so it seems appropriate for President Obama go public with his concerns, especially in the context of a trip whose main goal was to reaffirm the U.S.’s commitment to the Afghanistan mission.

Likewise with Israel, which under Bibi Netanyahu has refused to honor its past commitments to halt settlements and continued its provocative anti-Palestinian housing policies in East Jerusalem, creating enormous difficulties for the peace process and for U.S. credibility in the region. Given the very public intransigence of the Israeli government in response to U.S. entreaties, it seems appropriate for the Obama administration to make clear to Israeli, American, and international publics where it stands on the question of Israeli settlements, and what it requires of its partner state.

The more important question is: Will this approach work? We’ll have to wait and see. One thing is for sure, though: recent history doesn’t argue in favor of the “pressure only in private” approach. It has failed thus far, after eight years, to produce significant Afghan movement against corruption. And it was only after the Obama administration began applying public pressure that the Netanyahu government agreed to partially and temporarily meet its commitment to halt settlements.

Finally, as Matt Yglesias noted recently, the idea that, in contrast to “bullying” its allies, the U.S. is “coddling” Iran — against whom the U.S. has implemented numerous sanctions and penalties over the past thirty years, and is currently working to assemble a coalition to adopt even more — is just daft. But it’s also indicative of how far the president’s critics will reach for any argument, no matter how blatantly implausible and dishonest, to bash him.