When reviewing history, there’s interpretation, and then there’s just flat-out misleading your readers. Jackson Diehl’s editorial today is an example of the latter:

Eighteen months ago, when the then-new Obama administration tried to jump start Middle East peace negotiations, the Palestinian president balked. He said he would not agree even to meet the newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, unless Netanyahu made several big concessions in advance — including recognition of a Palestinian state on the basis of Israel’s 1967 borders and a freeze on all Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.

Convinced that Netanyahu was the problem, the Obama administration spent the next year in a crude and clumsy effort to extract those concessions. Netanyahu stoutly resisted; the administration belatedly discovered that it could not compel a democratic ally to comply with its demands. Eventually a rough compromise emerged: Netanyahu publicly accepted the idea, but not the pre-defined borders, of a Palestinian state; and he imposed a partial and temporary freeze on the settlements, which is due to expire in September.

This is just unreal. For a start, neither recognition of a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders nor a settlement freeze are in any sense Israeli “concessions” — they are commitments that Israeli had already made as part of the Bush administration-led Quartet’s 2002 road map. Netanyahu came into office and refused to honor those commitments, holding out and essentially insisting that Israel be paid twice for the same goods. Diehl assists in this scam when he writes as if it’s somehow inappropriate for an American president to try to “compel a democratic ally to comply” with agreements it was refusing to honor.

Add to this the fact the so-called “moratorium” — in which Netanyahu begrudgingly agreed to partially fulfill Israel’s commitment to halt settlements — has turned out to be a complete farce, with the New York Times reporting in July that, because of a massive surge in settlement starts before it took hold, the pace of settlement building during the “moratorium” has “remained largely unchanged.” Having reaped American praise for finally adhering to obligations that Israel had already made, Netanyahu went ahead and found ways to get around those obligations anyway.

And then today comes the news that Netanyahu has rejected the 1967 borders as a basis for negotiation — which is to say he rejects the very basis upon which both the U.S. and the international community has for decades, and through multiple resolutions, held that the conflict would be resolved. What will probably happen is that, a few weeks or months from now, Netanyahu will, after having extracted further (actual) concessions from the U.S., agree to kind of sort of (not really) consider the 1967 borders, and then Jackson Diehl can write another op-ed portraying this as another bold stroke for peace.

While I would rather see Abbas agree to direct talks and call Netanyahu’s bluff (the Palestinians have already submitted a proposal on borders to the Israelis, to which the Israelis have yet to respond, just as they have yet to respond to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative), it’s really not hard to understand why Abbas would resist having his already-shaky domestic credibility further undermined by being drawn into such a process.

When I was in Israel recently, a former Israeli government official remarked to me that given that the Palestinians have fulfilled most of their road map obligations, the Israelis “are desperate to find evidence of Palestinian wrongdoing” in order to combat the perception that it is the Israelis who are the intransigent party. This helps explain the increased Israeli focus on Palestinian incitement against Israel, which is still very much a problem, though one that has vastly improved over the past years, in keeping with Palestinians’ road map commitment to improve it. Somehow I doubt that Diehl would praise Abbas’ “stout resistance” if Abbas began treating the P.A.’s past commitments on incitement as a new “concession.” It’s a mystery why Diehl is willing to assist Netanyahu in a similar misrepresentation.

The flooding in Pakistan is an immense catastrophe and has overwhelmed the ability of the Pakistani government to respond. As the Progress Report today explains, “massive monsoonal flooding continues to ravage the country, leaving one-fifth of Pakistan underwater. After weeks of flooding, about 14 million people have already been affected by the floods — including six million children — and estimates of the dead have ranged from 1,200 to 1,600.” While the world has been slow to give, the US has been proactive, providing the most assistance thus far. Helicopters have been sent to the area and have “evacuated 3089 people and delivered 322,340 pounds of relief supplies,” with more on the way. Naval vessels have been parked off Pakistan’s coast to provide logistical assistance. Tanvir Ahmad Khan, a former Pakistani foreign secretary noted from Islamabad that:

The American assistance has been considerable, it has been prompt, and it has been effective.

Not only is helping people in desperate need a very good and moral thing to do, but as Larry Korb and I have argued previously, providing foreign assistance and humanitarian relief in the wake of a disaster is fundamentally in the US national interest. Rahm Emanuel’s statement that one “should never allow a crisis go to waste” is a reflection of the opportunity for change and transformation that a sudden crisis brings about. While this can be viewed cynically, the fact is that the same applies to the floods in Pakistan.

While working with Pakistan is vital to broader US counter-terrorism aims, the Pakistani public has an immensely negative view of the United States. Providing disaster assistance won’t automatically make everyone love us, but it will have an impact. Being on the ground providing aid and assistance in desperate situations following natural disasters, is something that is not soon forgotten. After an initially slow start following the Tsunami disaster in 2004, the US military and US aid agencies mobilized. The military essentially created a sea base, involving a flotilla of ships, of the coast off Indonesia. The US had 15,000 troops in the region and went about urgently ferrying needed supplies to the destroyed coastal regions that were unreachable by land due to the destruction of infrastructure. Following this effort, a Pew Survey found that 80 percent of the citizens of the world’s largest Muslim-majority country had a more favorable opinion of the United States after our response.

The US needs to think more strategically about how to make disaster response a core function of its foreign policy mission than an after thought. In short, the US should embrace being the world’s first responder.

Principally, the US military should make disaster response a core mission. Some may rightly worry about the militarization of aid, and there is no doubt that any disaster response would have to be a multi-agency activity with the expertise of USAID and State taking the lead roles. But no other agency, or frankly country, can provide the logistical reach and capabilities as the US military. As the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, commented during the Tsunami response, “We literally built a city at sea for no other purpose than to serve the needs of other people.” Yet disaster response remains an afterthought and is rarely taken into account in procurement decisions and in the design of new systems.

Some may see the mantle of global first responder as a distraction from “hard” security concerns. But this is nonsense. Responding to natural disasters helps promote stability, improves the image of the United States, and often improves ties and coordination with the affected country’s government. Finally, responding to natural disasters is the price of being the world’s largest superpower. As the guarantor of global security, the U.S. is looked to not just for its ability to deter threats but also for its ability to help when countries are in need. If we are going to have a global military presence, it would make sense for this presence to be seen globally in as positive a light as possible – and being seen as a global first responder is one such way to make this happen.

Earlier this week, Florida Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum (R) unveiled a proposed immigration bill which many argue is “even tougher” than Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB-1070. He didn’t write it, but McCollum still conveniently took the lead in selling and promoting the bill to voters as part of his political campaign. However, McCollum’s pandering on the issue is costing him the support of Latino members of his own party:

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) [Co-chair of McCollum's Statewide Hispanic Leadership Team]: “I’m disappointed and was blindsided by Bill’s decision to promote this, and I encourage the candidates to focus on plans that will improve Florida’s economy, bring jobs to our state and jump-start our tourism…I fail to see how promotion of this issue will accomplish that, and I was taken aback.”

State Rep. J.C. Planas (R-FL) [Vice chairman of the Hispanic Legislative Caucus]: “I believe this may be the death knell of the party, if they continue like this. I think this definitely hurts our ability to be a majority party. I think that for a lot of politicians talking about this, it is lip service; they feel some sort of constituency will vote for this. But you have to question the sanity of this.”

Ana Navarro [Republican political consultant and adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign]:”I will not campaign against McCollum but will also not lift a finger or raise one additional dollar to support his campaign. Though I believe McCollum is far better prepared to be governor than Rick Scott, I cannot bring myself to cast a vote for either.”

There are also a number of Florida Republicans who aren’t exactly willing to go to bat for McCollum on this issue either. When asked about McCollum’s latest move, a spokesperson for Senate candidate Marco Rubio (R-FL) simply stated, “He believes the best approach is for the federal government to deal with border security and immigration, and he hopes state efforts like Arizona are a wake-up call for Congress to get its act together.” Republican consultant and Miami-Dade School Board candidate Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) explained that McCollum is “reacting to his opponent’s strategy.” Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL), who also co-chairs McCollum’s Statewide Hispanic Leadership Team, stated that though he still supports McCollum, he “personally disagree[s] with him having to go that far.” Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), other co-chairs of McCollum’s leadership team, could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, even Latino business leaders are speaking out again McCollum. Leonardo Garcia, president of the local Hispanic-American Business Alliance, noted, “[Arizona] is losing money. The business community is losing money. Why bring that to the state of Florida?”