In the speech Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) gave immediately after signing off on Arizona’s harsh new immigration law, SB-1070, she stated, “We cannot stand idly by as drop houses, kidnappings and violence compromise our quality of life.” She defended her approval of SB-1070 by pointing out, “We cannot delay while the destruction happening south of our international border creeps its way north.” However, last night on CNN, John King pointed out to Brewer that FBI statistics actually show violent crime in Arizona has decreased slightly. Brewer acknowledged that contrary to the bleak picture she has painted, overall crime in Arizona is down. However, Brewer also proceeded to blame the crime that still exists on undocumented immigrants:

KING: There are drugs coming across the border. But if you look at FBI statistics, they actually say despite these awful things that violent crime is essentially at a flat rate, even down a little bit. And some would say that, yes, you know, there have been some horrible incidents, but in total, crime’s actually down. There’s not a need for this.

BREWER: In regards to illegal immigration crime or to what kind of crime? Crime is down in Arizona. The fact of the matter is, if you’re living in Arizona and you are living in the areas that are severely impacted, you are faced with it on a daily basis. And we’re not going to put up with it anymore. We have borders. Every nation has reasons to have lines, borders, might you say, you know? And a nation without borders is like a house without walls. It collapses. And that’s what’s going to happen to America. We need our borders secured.

Watch it:

The FBI Uniform Crime Reports and statistics that King cited show that “while the nation’s illegal-immigrant population doubled from 1994 to 2004, according to federal records…the violent-crime rate declined 35 percent.” More specifically, crime rates in Arizona border towns have remained flat over the past decade. Arizona border Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, has stated, “This is a media-created event…I hear politicians on TV saying the border has gotten worse. Well, the fact of the matter is that the border has never been more secure.”

FBI statistics also show that crime is declining in U.S. border towns across the U.S. Meanwhile, when Tim Wadsworth, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, studied U.S. cities with more than 50,000 people he found that “the cities that experience the greatest growth in immigration were the same one that were experiencing the greatest declines in violent crime.”

Perhaps the reason that Brewer feels that “illegal immigration crime” is up is because Arizona law allows the prosecution of undocumented immigrants on felony charges for being “co-conspirators” in their own smuggling. If found guilty of smuggling themselves over the border, those immigrants are then jailed for 90 days at the taxpayer’s expense rather than being immediately deported back to their home country.

During her interview, Brewer also affirmed that she is not worried about Arizona’s image. She also made clear that visitors from several neighboring states that grant undocumented immigrants drivers’ licenses better pack a proof of legal residency when visiting Arizona. “It wouldn’t matter whether you were Latino or Hispanic or Norwegian…If you didn’t have proof of citizenship and if the police officer had reasonable suspicion, he would ask and verify your citizenship.”

Since the Israeli raid on a flotilla of humanitarian aid ships bound for Gaza this week that resulted in 9 deaths and widespread international condemnation, American conservatives rushed to defend the raid, echoing Israeli officials’ erroneous claims that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. At the same time, the Obama administration and leading Democrats in Congress won’t condemn the attack. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused to comment on it and an Israeli government spokesman thanked the U.S. for working “behind the scenes to water down” a U.N. Security Council statement on the incident.

But across the Atlantic, America’s closest friend and ally has taken a decidedly different position. Today during the UK parliament’s Prime Minister’s questions, acting Labour Party leader Harriet Harman asked Prime Minster David Cameron about the incident, noting that Israel’s Gaza blockade is “prolonging” Palestinians’ “suffering” and hindering Middle East peace. Cameron, a conservative, agreed:

CAMERON: What has happened is completely unacceptable. We should be clear abou that. And we should also deplore the loss of life. [...]

We should do everything we can through the United Nations, where resolution 1860 is aboslutely clear about the need to end the blockade and to open up Gaza. And what I would say in addition is this, that friends of Israel, and I count myself a friend of Israel, should be saying to the Israelis that the blockade actually strengthens Hamas’s grip on the economy and on Gaza and it’s in their own interests to lift it and to allow these vital supplies to get through.

Watch it:

While Israel’s logic of the blockade has been that “a collapsing economy will convince Gaza’s people to push Hamas from power,” the reality is that ordinary Gazans are suffering and Hamas “has benefited handsomely” from it:

They’re doing so, veteran Gaza businessmen say, thanks to the fact that Hamas can generate capital while all its potential competitors are running dry. They charge that Hamas and its associates have been using their control of smuggling tunnels, money changing, and tax revenue to buy prime tracts of land and buildings across Gaza, particularly along the enclave’s main boulevards.

“Thanks to Israel, while everyone else suffers, day after day Hamas is strengthening itself with the blockade,” says Amr Hamad, executive manager of Gaza’s Palestinian Federation of Industries (PFI), a private-sector organization. “And they are using this position to deepen their roots in Gaza.”

Even a Bush administration State Department official said in 2008 that the blockade “wasn’t working.” “Within Gaza, Hamas seems the least effected by the closure,” he said.

Obama administration officials had vigorously sought to lower expectations for reaching a global consensus during the month long twice-decade conference that reviews the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher said as much here at the Center for American Progress. But in the end the conference delivered what they said was unlikely, a consensus among all 189 countries.

The consensus was achieved on the last day of the conference and succeeded in getting all 189 countries to renew their commitments to the 40 year old treaty that undergirds the nonproliferation regime and serves to prevent the nuclear proliferation damn from breaking. The US had hoped to get countries to agree to stronger safeguard and inspection measures, but since the review operates by consensus getting all 189 countries party to the treaty to sign up to anything is quite an accomplishment (just ask those at Copenhagen last December).

Nevertheless, the consensus in support of the treaty is important because it affirms that the treaty’s central bargain – which holds that non-nuclear states agree not to develop nuclear weapons and in exchange nuclear armed states pledge to reduce their arsenals and give non-nuclear states access to civilian nuclear technology – remains in tact. Over the last decade, the treaty and the non-proliferation regime was pushed to its breaking point. The 2005 conference ended in acrimony, as the Bush administration’s regressive approach to non-proliferation and their overall disdain for multilateralism and global cooperation meant the conference failed before it ever started. Furthermore, the US-India nuclear deal negotiated by the Bush administration further undercut the treaty and was seen by non-nuclear NPT members as a real slap in the face, as India is not a member of the NPT. Egypt’s U.N. ambassador, Maged Abdel Aziz, who led the large non-aligned bloc during negotiations, explained:

If you say countries outside the treaty are going to get … even more benefits than countries inside the treaty, than what is the benefit for me to bind myself with more [nonproliferation] restrictions?

As a result, getting a consensus document this time around has gotten the regime back on track and has helped move past the regressive years of the Bush administration. An Obama administration official exclaimed:

We’ve got the NPT back on track. There was so much criticism about 2005… and a lot of doom and gloom about the treaty failing… We have to hold this treaty together.

Yet much attention in the US press has focused on the main US “concession,” which saw the US agree to back the holding of a conference on a nuclear-free Middle East that involves Israel. Defensive quotes from American officials, disguise the fact that this agreement is nothing new and was essentially what was agreed to at the 1995 conference. George Perkovich of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted that:

If Israel were to participate, the states that don’t even recognize its existence now–that don’t have diplomatic relations with it, that don’t meet openly with Israeli officials–would have to come sit with Israel and begin discussions on what would it take to rid the region of weapons of mass destruction…That means that Iran would have to recognize Israel, which it doesn’t now, as would Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, and so forth… Israel can’t be forced to give up its nuclear capability. Rather than being defensive and pretending that this hasn’t been an issue all these years, it’s better for Israel to step forward and invite the other states in the region and say, “OK, you want to make this a zone free of weapons of mass destruction? What are you prepared to do?”

In the end, as Perkovich noted this NPT review conference was an “incremental success” and ensures that the global nuclear security agenda remains on track. Additionally, while the final document did not mention Iran by name, it did call on states that are not compliant with the treaty to come into compliance. This was clearly directed at Iran and had strong backing and demonstrated a growing international frustration with Iranian actions. Far from undermining the US sanctions efforts, which the Iranians had hoped to do, those efforts have in the end been strengthened by the conference.

It really must be understood how ridiculous it is for Elliott Abrams — whose incompetence bears as much responsibility as any American official’s for the current sad state of affairs in Israel-Palestine — to presume to criticize the Obama administration for its handling of the Israel-Palestine file. That’s certainly not to say that there’s nothing to criticize, it’s just that when you’re the guy whose (possibly illegal) attempt to reverse the outcome of Palestinian elections (that your own administration insisted on having!) blew up in your — and Israel’s, and Palestine’s — face, resulting in a Palestinian civil war that left Hamas in control of Gaza and Israel targeted by its rockets, you might have the decency to think twice about bad-mouthing the current administration to anyone who will listen.

Not Abrams, who seems to relish the opportunity to tell Israelis how bad President Obama is for them. (Apparently it’s okay now for former U.S. officials to criticize the current administration in foreign media. Something tells me this will change when a Republican is president.) Writing in the Weekly Standard, Abrams is unsatisfied with the Obama administration’s statement of solidarity with Israel and its watering down of the United Nations statement on the flotilla attack, and insists that Obama administration has left Israel to “stand alone“:

On the Gaza flotilla, the Obama administration waffled and straddled. It agreed to a statement in which the United Nations condemned the “acts” that led to loss of life but did not say “We condemn Israel.” Presumably White House congratulated itself on this elision, but no one is fooled: the world media keep repeating that the Security Council condemned Israel, and in this case it is hard to argue. Yet it would have been simple to stop the mob had the White House wanted to. [...]

No doubt the administration will claim it avoided a worse result, a Council resolution condemning Israel. To which the answer is, “not good enough.” The U.S. has the power to block all anti-Israel moves in the Security Council, not just some of them, and to do so without agreeing to unfair, damaging compromises.

So why did we agree to the presidential statement? The White House did not wish to stand with Israel against this mob because it does not have a policy of solidarity with Israel. Rather, its policy is one of distancing and pressure.

In Abrams’ view, it’s “not good enough” for the U.S. to continue to support Israel while also working to manage other important relationships. For Abrams, and those who think like him, it must be Israel over all.

But we have to remember that, for eight years under George W. Bush, this was U.S. policy, a policy overseen by Abrams himself: No space between Israel and America, unquestioning support for all Israeli actions, no matter how provocative, blatantly violative of past agreements, or harmful to American goals and interests, and a deep concern for the realities of Israeli politics coupled with a failure to recognize that Palestinian politics even exist. And we know the result: Vastly diminished U.S. influence, greatly empowered Islamic extremism, and Israel as much of an international pariah as it ever has been. This is Elliott Abrams’ legacy (well, in addition to the Iran-Contra thing) and he, and those he’s attempting to preach to, shouldn’t be allowed to forget.