Last night, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) filed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2010.

The bill establishes a path to legalization, but also outlines a set of border enforcement “triggers” that must be met before any unauthorized immigrants can apply for permanent residency. Once those benchmarks are reached, undocumented immigrants will have the opportunity to register with the government, undergo a background check, learn English, and pay fines and taxes on their way to becoming American citizens.

The legislation also includes the DREAM Act which would allow undocumented youth to regularize their status by going to college or serving in the military. AgJOBS, which would establish an earned legalization program for undocumented farmworkers and revise the existing H-2A temporary foreign agricultural worker program to provide farmers with a steady flow of labor they need is additionally attached to the bill.

Republicans have already blasted Menendez’s bill. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) called it nothing more than a “cynical ploy for votes.” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) called the push for immigration reform “for effect rather than reality.”

In fact, Hatch responded by introducing an immigration bill of his own today. According to the Deseret News, Hatch’s bill, Strengthening Our Commitment to Legal Immigration and America’s Security Act, “would require participation in key law enforcement programs, clamp down on identify theft, streamline the visa system, track the amount of welfare benefits being diverted to illegal immigrant households, curb serious abuses of immigration laws and help prevent Mexican cartels from using national parks and federal lands to grow marijuana.” However, it doesn’t do anything to address the status of the 11-12 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S. and the lack of visas available to migrants who want to work in the U.S.

Menendez doesn’t deny that the election will make it difficult to get any significant amount of floor time for an immigration debate this fall. However, his bill does show Latino voters what has been the reality all year long: Democrats have been more than ready to introduce and vote yes on immigration reform while Republicans have stalled and obstructed the issue. Menendez told Politico, “clearly, you see the difference between those who are willing to move forward and get a reform and [those who are] not, and for the Hispanic community, clearly they understand who stands on their side and [who does] not.”

As I predicted with the formation of the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative last year, the neocons have been hard at work to repair their reputations and position themselves to push America into all kinds of new, staggeringly expensive and disastrously counterproductive military adventures. Yes, the people who brought us the Iraq debacle — and, by under-resourcing Afghanistan for years as a result of Iraq, the Afghanistan crisis too — are trying to get America into yet another war in the Middle East, this time in Iran.

Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday, leading Congressional neocon Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) declared “It is time to retire our ambiguous mantra about all options remaining on the table”:

It is time for our message to our friends and enemies in the region to become clearer: namely, that we will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability — by peaceful means if we possibly can, but with military force if we absolutely must.

Leaving aside the other reasons, which I’ll get to in a second, why it’s important for Americans to reject Joe Lieberman’s warmongering, there’s the rather significant fact that his central proposition is an exercise in question begging. It’s entirely unclear that the U.S. can, even if it decides to do so, stop Iran’s nuclear program through military means.

As Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman General James Cartwright stated in testimony to the Senate Armed Services committee in April, strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities would, at best, only delay the Iranian nuclear program for a few years, while at the same time solidifying Iranian domestic support for the regime and removing any hesitancy that may have existed over the necessity of obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Gen. Cartwright was then pressed by Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) on whether the only way to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear capability was “to physically occupy their country and disestablish their nuclear facilities?”

Gen. Cartwright answered: “Absent some other unknown calculus that would go on, that’s a fair conclusion.”

Gen. Cartwright’s comments track squarely with those of retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, who, in discussing the various scenarios and likely consequences of a strike on Iran, concluded: “If you follow this all the way down, eventually I’m putting boots on the ground somewhere. And like I tell my friends, if you like Iraq and Afghanistan, you’ll love Iran.”

Which brings us to Iraq and Afghanistan, two disasters for which Joe Lieberman bears as much responsibility as any American politician. As Eli Clifton helpfully points out, Lieberman is now simply repurposing his Iraq arguments for Iran. Which is, of course, what all the neocons are doing. (No, these are not particularly imaginative people.)

How does Lieberman get around the Iraqi elephant in the room? By ignoring it, basically. In a 3,000 word speech entitled “The Future of American Power in the Middle East,” the word “Iraq” — a country where we have lost over 4,000 troops, taken over 30,000 casualties, and spent nearly $800 billion — appears twice.

First, to lament “the anxieties in the region” about American power that resulted from “the mismanagement of the early years in postwar Iraq,” implying that the surge had magically solved that problem, which is as unsurprising as it is false. And then to note that Iran’s “dream of replicating the Hezbollah model in southern Iraq was rolled back by the Iraqi and U.S. forces,” a baldly disingenuous rendering that ignores Iran’s key role in ending the fighting in southern Iraq, as well as its continuing influence in a post-war government made up largely of its clients and proxies.

What this gets at pretty starkly is that Joe Lieberman, as with others in the neoconservative faction, either doesn’t grasp, or simply refuses to admit, that the Iraq war has had hugely negative consequences for the United States and our allies in the region. Why? Well, obviously, because now they want to run it again.

But make no mistake: fantasies of “surgical strikes” aside, another invasion and occupation are what Joe Lieberman and the neocons are talking about when they press for “military action” against Iran. It will not be “surgical,” however, and it will not be quick. These are facts that Joe Lieberman needs to be made confront.

Today, Fox News Channel owner Rupert Murdoch testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Membership on the “Role of Immigration in Strengthening America’s Economy.” In his testimony, Murdoch called for comprehensive immigration reform which includes a path to citizenship that brings 11-12 million new people into the U.S. tax base. According to Murdoch, “it’s impossible to secure our borders without an overall package of reforms”:

Our partnership advocates reform that gives a path to citizenship to responsible, law-abiding immigrants who are in the U.S. today without proper authority. It is nonsense to talk about expelling 11 or 12 million people. Not only is it impractical, it is cost-prohibitive. A study this year put the cost of mass deportation at $285 billion over five years. There are better ways to spend our money. [...]

A full path to legalization: requiring unauthorized immigrants to register, undergo a security check, pay taxes, and learn English would bring these immigrants out of a shadow economy and into our tax base. According to one study, a path to legalization would contribute an estimated $1.5 trillion to the gross domestic product over ten years.

Earlier this year, Murdoch indicated that the media should be involved in the push for comprehensive immigration reform. However, Fox News employees don’t seem to agree. More than any other network, Fox News has repeatedly and consistently advocated against immigration reform and referred to Murdoch’s proposal as “amnesty.” Fox News superstar Bill O’Reilly called it outright “crap” that undocumented immigrants pay taxes. Fox News host Eric Bolling similarly claimed that American citizens “pay taxes,” as opposed to “illegals not paying taxes.”

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) called Murdoch out on the blatant contradiction later in the hearing, pointing out, “it does not appear that what you are talking and the way you are discussing it is the way it is discussed on Fox.” Murdoch defended his position and his network:

We are home to all views on Fox. [...] We don’t censor that or take any particular line at all. We are not anti-immigrant on Fox News. [...] We certainly employ a lot of immigrants at Fox. In all arms of Fox. We have many immigrants there and we do not take a consistent anti-immigrant line.

Watch it:

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) supported Murdoch’s defense of Fox News, saying most people think that the network is “the most fair.”

Yesterday, more than 40 members of the bipartisan Consensus for American Security, made up of retired military leaders and national security experts, sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urging them to vote on the New START Treaty by the end of the year. The letter highlights the urgency of the national security crisis being created by the absence of mechanisms to monitor Russia’s nuclear arsenal. The letter states:

Currently, we have no verification regime to account for Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons. Two hundred and ninety seven (297) days have elapsed since American teams have been allowed to inspect Russian nuclear forces, and we are concerned that further inaction will bring unacceptable lapses in U.S. intelligence about Russia’s strategic arsenal. Without New START, we believe that the United States is less secure.

The fact that the Right in the U.S. isn’t rushing to get New START ratified is a damning indication of both their foreign policy incoherence and how their animosity toward the President drives their views. The Right consistently clamors about how we can’t trust the Russians, yet if you don’t trust the Russians you want to have this treaty ratified yesterday and you want US inspectors back on the ground in Russia to start inspecting Russian nuclear missiles as soon as possible. This was David Broder’s point in August, when he noted that Jon Kyl’s lack of awareness of the verification gap was quite “the price to pay for ignorance.”

Yet the apparently pro-Putin Heritage Foundation in a new memo from the mysteriously anonymous “New START Working Group,” insists that there is no urgency to ratify the New START Treaty or inspect Russia’s nukes.

The two sides, in a December 4, 2009, joint statement, expressed their commitment, as a matter of principle, to continue to work together in the spirit of the START treaty following its expiration. Is the Administration now suggesting that Russia might violate this spirit of cooperation while the Senate does its due diligence on New START? Finally, the U.S. has 15 years of data on Russian strategic forces thanks to START, and the Russians are unlikely to significantly change their forces while the Senate takes its time.

This is simply jaw dropping. The Heritage Foundation apparently thinks that it is okay to simply trust the Russians because they deem it “unlikely” they will do any cheating. This is the same organization that puts out videos grouping Putin with Kim Jung Il and advocates building super awesome Gazillion dollar missile defense system on the pretty unlikely grounds that the Russians are out to get us. There is an informal agreement to follow “the spirit” of the START treaty, despite it not having legal force. But this was always premised on the notion that New START would be ratified rapidly since it is not that different from the old treaty. In other words, there would be little reason to fear Russian cheating, since in a few months time the treaty would take force.

But 300 days later we still have no treaty. And there is a real and present danger that should the Senate punt on New START that the spirit of this agreement will collapse. Believing it unlikely that a more conservative Senate will ever ratify New START, the Russians may decide to change their approach. Anyone the least bit distrustful of the Russian military should be very afraid of this outcome. Yet, in what has to amount to a massive betrayal of Reagan’s “trust but verify” statement, the Heritage Foundation is now saying, take your time trust the Russians.

Finally, Heritage claims that the Administration should have just sought a five-year extension of the START I treaty. I mean duh, why didn’t the Administration think of that? Maybe because you can’t simply unilaterally extend treaties. There were many indications that the Russians were not interested in extending the START 1 treaty as it was. If the Russians didn’t want to, it couldn’t be done. But furthermore, the US also wanted to renegotiate and update the treaty. Many of the verification and monitoring measures in old START had become, well, old, unnecessary, and burdensome.

But lastly, debating why or why not something was done 18 months ago is irrelevant – we are where we are and that is a place where the US is rapidly losing its intel on Russia’s nuclear arsenal. It is a place where we simply trust the Russians. If the Heritage Foundation believes it was a grave mistake for the Obama administration not to have sought to extend the original START treaty so that verification remained in place, then it should be important enough to them to urge the ratification of New START now. The fact that isn’t, speaks volumes.

Last spring, the United States pledged nearly $1.2 billion in emergency aid to Haiti following its tragic earthquake that left hundreds of thousands of people dead and many more homeless.

Yet the Associated Press (AP) reports today that “not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived” to Haitians who badly the need the aid. This summer, both the House and the Senate passed a bill that would make $917 million available for Haiti reconstruction aid. Yet Congress must also pass an authorization bill that directs exactly how the money will be spent, and thus far, the U.S. Senate has failed to do.

The AP conducted its own investigation of why the Senate has failed to pass the authorization bill, and it discovered that a single senator “pulled it for further study.” After calling dozens of senators’ offices, the AP discovered that the senator holding up the bill is Tom Coburn (R-OK). Coburn spokeswoman Becky Berhardt explained that the reason he is holding up the bill is because he objects to the creation of a senior Haiti coordinator — a position that would cost a paltry $5 million over five years — when the United States currently has an ambassador to the country:

Now the authorization bill that would direct how the aid is delivered remains sidelined by a senator who anonymously pulled it for further study. Through calls to dozens of senators’ offices, the AP learned it was Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma. “He is holding the bill because it includes an unnecessary senior Haiti coordinator when we already have one” in U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten, Coburn spokeswoman Becky Bernhardt said.

The bill proposes a new coordinator in Washington who would not oversee U.S. aid but would work with the USAID administrator in Washington to develop a rebuilding strategy. The position would cost $1 million a year for five years, including salaries and expenses for a staff of up to seven people.

While Coburn continues to hold up much-needed reconstruction aid over a relatively meaningless objection, “just 2 percent of [Haiti's earthquake] rubble has been cleared and 13,000 temporary shelters have been built – less than 10 percent of the number planned.” There are estimated to be 1.3 million Haitians still homeless as a result of the earthquake.

The New York Times reports that, “even as officials in the United States and Iraq made public pronouncements that reveled in Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s demise,” the group has “embarked on a wave of terror that managed to shake even an Iraqi public inured to violence”:

[D]uring the past two months, Iraq has witnessed some of its highest casualty tolls in more than two years, according to the government.

How Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has managed this unlikely turnaround — from a near spent force to a reinvigorated threat to Iraq’s democracy in a little more than two months — is a puzzle to both the Americans and Iraqis who study the insurgent group, some of whom now wonder whether the organization in Iraq can ever be entirely defeated.

“The people who said Al Qaeda in Iraq was finished were fooling themselves,” said Hadi al-Amiri, former leader of a Shiite militia and also of the Parliament’s security committee, using another name for the insurgent group. “They have sleeper cells throughout the country that have always been capable of rising up at any moment. They will not be finished in Iraq anytime soon.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported Sunday that hundreds of police officers, formerly members of an American-backed Sunni Anbar Awakening paramilitary force, “will be stripped of their ranks“:

The officers called the move by Iraq’s Interior Ministry, which oversees police, a threat to security in Anbar, once a stronghold of Sunni insurgent violence. In 2006, a group called the Awakening, some of them former insurgents, rose up with tribal and U.S. backing to battle al-Qaeda in Iraq. The same strategy was mirrored across the country with American backing and funding, and what became the Sons of Iraq is credited with helping calm Sunni Arab areas.

In 2007, the U.S. military transformed many of the Awakening members in Anbar into police officers. Now many, such as these 410 men, are being stripped of their ranks, are being targeted by al-Qaeda in Iraq or think the Shiite-led government is trying to get rid of them.

“This committee in the Ministry of Interior is sectarian,” said Ahmed Abu Risha, the head of the Awakening and a tribal leader in Anbar. “When you dismiss those who fought al-Qaeda in the streets, this is support for al-Qaeda. What I expect are dire consequences.”

The rise of the the Sunni Awakenings paramilitaries and the degradation of Al Qaeda in Iraq were, rightly or wrongly, touted as two of the key achievements of the surge in Iraq.

Another supposed achievement was the weakening of anti-American Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Articles reveling in Sadr’s demise became an entire genre unto themselves, including this classic from former occupation spokesman Dan Senor. As I wrote at the time, Senor and others really failed to grasp that Sadr was more than just a militia leader, he was a symbol of Shia suffering with considerable support among Iraq’s urban Shia underclass. The U.S. wouldn’t change this simply by beating up on the Jaysh al-Mahdi.

The U.S. beat up on the Jaysh al-Mahdi pretty bad. But as Babak Dehghanpisheh wrote in August, Sadr is now “a kingmaker in Iraqi politics,” commanding the largest single bloc in Iraqi parliament, put there by Sadr’s considerable support among Iraq’s urban Shia underclass.

It’s generally been accepted that, while the surge helped produce greater security in Iraq, it failed to facilitate the political development that was one of its goals. As Brian Katulis, Marc Lynch, and Peter Juul wrote back in September 2008, the surge “froze into place the accelerated fragmentation that Iraq underwent in 2006 and 2007 and has created disincentives to bridge central divisions between Iraqi factions.” That analysis has been pretty strongly vindicated, but now going on seven months since Iraqis have been trying to form a government, it seems that even of some of the security gains upon which the “surge success” narrative was based are dissolving as well.

And if that weren’t troubling enough, consider: This is the success we’re trying to reproduce in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R-NV) released a vicious ad slamming opponent Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) as being the “best friend an illegal alien ever had.” “Illegals sneaking across our border, putting Americans’ safety and jobs at risk,” the ad narrator proclaims as images of menacing men with flashlights walking along a fence appear on the screen alongside a snapshot of an innocent looking white family.

The tone of the ad is so offensive that even the chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Hispanic Caucus and Angle spokesperson, Tibi Ellis, criticized it on Spanish language radio. The Las Vegas Sun reports:

Tibi Ellis on Monday told 1060 AM Spanish radio host Edwin Saldarriaga that she doesn’t agree with Angle’s depiction of illegal immigrants in a campaign ad released earlier this month.

“I condemned this type of propaganda, no matter who is running them, where they blame Mexicans as the only problem and where they attack them as the only source of illegal immigration,” Ellis told Saldarriaga. “I don’t agree with that.”

Ellis stressed to Saldarriaga that she was not representing Angle during the interview. Ellis, however, has served as a spokeswoman for Angle, according to an interview she gave to Texas GOP Vote, in which she recounted a campaign trip she took with Angle to Denton, Texas.

Watch the ad:

Politifact found the claims made in Angle’s ad are also blatantly false. Besides claiming that Reid and “illegal aliens” are BFF, the ad accuses Reid of giving undocumented immigrants tax breaks as the rest of Nevadans languish in the deep recession. However, according to Politifact, “Most of the Angle camp’s cited votes were actually aimed at people in the U.S. legally (even though they may formerly have been illegal), and in at least two cases, we disagree that what was being voted on represented a ‘special tax break’ at all.”

A Reid spokesperson remarked, “Sharron Angle’s extreme hostility toward Hispanic Nevadans is so blatant and so striking that not even her own campaign surrogates can avoid denouncing her shameless efforts to play on voters’ worst fears with her thoroughly-debunked lies about immigration.”

Angle’s campaign, however, has not “conceded” the Latino vote. Angle is reportedly “courting endorsements from Hispanic leaders and has plans to air Spanish-language ads.” Some Latinos still remain skeptical. “For me, she is scary,” Esperanza Montelongo, a Reid supporter who hosts a Spanish-language political radio show in Las Vegas, told the Associated Press. “She is anti-anything Latino.”

Our guest blogger is Andrew Sweet, a Research Associate at the Center for American Progress.

Last Wednesday, President Obama outlined his global development strategy in an address to the United Nations General Assembly. This was the result of an intensive review process that began last summer and involved nearly 20 agencies and departments. The process took longer than hoped, in part because at times it became entangled with the State Department’s first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, or QDDR.

The new global development policy — laid out in a Presidential Policy Directive — looks to provide clear policy guidance to the current archaic development architecture where United States Government agencies are pursuing over 1,000 different development goals, objectives, and priorities and are governed by legislation first passed in 1961 and amended frequently — and often without much coherence — since that time.

The initial reviews of the new approach to development are in, and they have been strongly positive. Global development experts have said the policy has “exceeded expectations” and that President Obama showed “bold leadership” in announcing his new policy.

Some of the key policy outcomes of the PPD include:

• Formulation of a U.S. Global Development Strategy approved by the President every four years.

• Creation of a Global Development Council of leading figures from civil society and private and philanthropic sectors

• Establishment of an Interagency Policy Committee on Global Development to set priorities and coordinate development policy across the executive branch

Congress has also been supportive of the new reforms. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman, John Kerry, called the President’s development policy “bold and transformational.” Both Senator Kerry and his colleague, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, Howard Berman, stated that they are looking forward to translating the proposed policy reforms into law. (How this plays out on the Hill will be crucial, and some members have grumbled that they were not well briefed as the global development review and the QDDR moved forward.)

The challenge will come in the implementation of the new development policy. As CAP’s John Norris has written, there are some important tensions to resolve to make a good policy effective on the ground.

This new policy will be the focus of attention at today’s U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury, the USAID administrator, and CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation will expand upon the development policy rolled out at the United Nations last week.

Recently, in an interview with 92.3 KTAR’s Jay Lawrence, former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods — who is currently one of Gov. Jan Brewer’s (R-AZ) campaign co-chairs — admitted that he does not support Arizona’s new immigration law, SB-1070. Not only does Woods not support it, he also believes that it is unconstitutional for many of the same reasons the federal government posited when it sued Brewer a couple months ago:

WOODS: I’m in the minority on [SB-]1070 in that I did not and do not support it and the reason that I do not support it is primarily is that I do think it’s unconstitutional — for just that reason. I think it’s the federal government’s role and I don’t think we can have — I just think it’s unconstitutional — states are not going to be allowed to come in and have their own immigration policy. It won’t work. [...]

If they [Supreme Court] strike down the employer sanctions law — so we’ll know that first — then I think 1070 will go down as well. I ultimately think 1070 will be found unconstitutional right down the line. [...]

Listen:

It appears both the federal government and Woods agree that SB-1070 is federally preempted, as the lawsuit against the Arizona governor claims. However, despite agreeing with the federal government on the merits of its case, Woods thinks the law suit is wrong and believes that the state of Arizona should file a countersuit. “I do blame them [the government] for not stepping up and doing what we need at the Arizona border and I think that Arizona has to look very seriously at turning around and suing the federal government ourselves.”

Woods insists that despite the fact that he opposes the law responsible for Brewer’s rise to fame and the top of the gubernatorial ticket, he still thinks Brewer is “very courageous” and a “good governor.” He is proud to work on her campaign and reasons that Brewer was probably just “laying down the gauntlet” to force the federal government to act.

However, there may have been more cynical motivations involved. Six months ago, prior to signing SB-1070, Brewer had an approval rating “well below” 50 percent and faced two dozen challengers in the Republican primary. Polls estimated that her current Democrat opponent, current Attorney General Terry Goddard (D-AZ), even had a slight lead. After signing SB-1070, Brewer went from a politician with little name recognition to a political superstar. She effortlessly won the GOP primary and is currently leading Goddard by a 3-2 margin. Jim Haynes, president of the Behavior Research Center, which regularly polls in Arizona on political issues, told the Los Angeles Times “She came back from the dead because the Legislature handed her 1070 to sign.”

Woods also laid out his opposition to denying citizenship for American-born children of undocumented immigrants — the next legislative project of state Sen. Russell Pearce (R-AZ), sponsor of SB-1070:

LAWRENCE: The 14th amendment, the fact that we have anchor babies in the state, is that ever going to change? Is that a political move? Is that just posturing? Is it total folly?

WOODS: Well I think so. That’s not going to change. You’d have to change the Constitution. I believe if Arizona passed such a bill — that I will guarantee you will get struck down immediately and then you’ll have to go up to the Supreme Court and hope that they’ll change their minds on it. And I don’t think that will happen.

Brewer has already indicated her support of Pearce’s bill, stating, “They [undocumented immigrants] can take their children back with them.” Woods, however, would prefer to see Arizona move beyond the immigration debate: “I would hope that we could start focusing on things that are less divisive and more inclusive.”

With the expiration last night of Israel’s pretend settlement moratorium, settlers in the West Bank are apparently ignoring Prime Minister Netanyahu’s call for restraint, holding big parties and insulting the President of the United States as they begin new construction.

As if the end of the moratorium weren’t already putting enough strain on the negotiations, there’s also the fact that Netanyahu introduced a new demand of the Palestinians. Not only must they recognize Israel’s right to exist, as they already did in 1993 under the Oslo agreement. Now they must recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “must recognize the state as Jewish and say it in a clear manner to his people in their language,” Netanyahu said earlier this month.

Last Thursday, Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad spoke at the New America Foundation on the Palestinians’ current efforts to build durable state institutions under the conditions of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Fayyad why he thought Netanyahu had introduced this demand, and what he thought some of the implications of it might be for the peace process.

“I asked Mr. Netanyahu as to why he did it,” Fayyad answered, “honestly I cannot but speculate.” Fayyad reminded the audience that, under the Oslo accords, “we recognized Israel’s existence. Actually, we did more than just recognize Israel’s existence back in 1993″:

It was a lot more profound than just recognizing Israel’s existence. We had recognized then Israel’s “right to exist in peace and security.” It’s a very high form of recognition, if you will. Mutual recognition among nations is typically not that way. Countries recognize each other, members of the United Nations, and life goes on. In this particular case, we Palestinians, through the PLO, acting on behalf of all Palestinian people, in the occupied Palestinian territory and everywhere, recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace and security.

In passing, let me tell you what we got in return at the time. You’d think that in return for this recognition, we’d have gotten recognition on the part of Israel, the government of Israel, of our right to statehood, as Palestinian people. I think it’s only logical to think that way. That wasn’t the case. If you actually review the so-called declaration…of mutual recognition, you will find that actually, on the Israeli side, it involved Israel recognizing the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, that’s all. That is all. You recognize a country’s right to exist in peace and security, and the way that country chooses to define itself as a product of that country’s own internal political processes, I mean, that’s more than any country can be expected — we’re not even yet a country, and we’re not promised to be one in the context of that declaration — more than any country can be expected to offer.

Watch it (question at 49:25):

Fayyad also noted that this demand was not an element of the peace talks between either Jordan and Israel or Egypt and Israel. “Nor am I aware of that being a demand or expectation of any other nation around the world,” he said.

Speculating as to why the demand was introduced, Fayyad said “If it is intended to deal the refugees issue out of the equation, then let’s address that for what it is. Refugees is an element of the so-called permanent status issues, one of those issues that needs to be negotiated.” If the intention was to preempt the refugee issue, “then it’s a clear attempt at taking one issue out of negotiations,” Fayyad said, “a way to neutralize it before you begin negotiations. That would not be right.”

Discussing President Obama’s Iran policy on Fox News this morning, Bill Kristol gave the neoconservative’s answer to every foreign policy problem: military force.

Scoffing at President Obama’s continued offers of engagement, Kristol claimed that the only way to deal with Iran was to threaten war. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Iranians do a phony feint toward negotiations to try and buy some more time,” Kristol said. “That’s what they’re buying, they’re buying time for their nuclear program to go ahead, it has been going ahead.” Kristol then prepared the ground for what he hopes is America’s next war:

KRISTOL: I think the reason the president doesn’t want to talk about the real implications of having a delusional and hateful Iranian regime in power is that the real implications is if sanctions fail, we will have to use force. And not certain that the president doesn’t actually know that. I’m open to the notion that he will end up a year from now using force against Iran, and I guess he feels there’s no point signaling that now.

I think it’s a mistake, because I think the more you put force on the table, the more you might encourage those within Iran to say ‘wait a second we’re heading towards the precipice.’ That’s not his style, he keeps to door open to negotiations, but I’ve got to say that if you look at the way this is playing out, it’s playing out toward use of force against Iran.

Watch it:

In regard to the utility of threats of force against Iran, the actual evidence is, unsurprisingly, precisely the opposite of what Kristol says. President George W. Bush regularly threatened Iran, but rather than strengthening moderate voices, as Kristol imagines it would, this actually strengthened those elements who believe, like Kristol himself, that moderation signals weakness. As journalist Barbara Slavin wrote in 2007, Bush’s belligerent rhetoric had the effect of “boosting Iranian hardliners who argue that the Bush administration has no interest in reconciling with Iran and that Tehran’s best course is to reach bomb capacity as soon as possible.”

Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji was adamant in a May 2010 interview that talk of a U.S. military option was harmful. “If you do not have the threat of foreign invasion and you do not use the dialog of invasion and military intervention, the society itself has a huge potential to oppose and potentially topple the theocratic system,” Ganji said, adding:

What I’m trying to get to is that jingoistic, militaristic language used by any foreign power would actually be detrimental to this natural evolution of Iranian society.

“Unfortunately, the policies of the United States have fanned the flames of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East, particularly during the Bush administration,” Ganji said. “The belligerent rhetoric of Bush didn’t help us [the Iranian democracy movement], it actually harmed us.”

On the other hand, Ganji praised President Obama’s engagement policy, stating that it helped create a favorable environment for the Iranian democracy movement. “Obama offered a dialog with the Iran,” Ganji said, “and this change in discourse immediately gave rise to that outpouring of sentiment against the Islamic Republic last year.” Unlike Bush’s threats of war, which only served to unite the regime against an outside threat, Obama’s engagement policy, combined with increasing sanctions pressure, has, by offering the regime a genuine choice, contributed to the worst crisis of legitimacy in the Islamic Republic’s history.

Ganji also noted, however, that continuing fear of U.S. action had caused democracy activists to censor themselves. “Since Iranians, in particular opposition groups, do not want to see a repeat of Afghanistan or Iraq in Iran,” Ganji said, “they’ve actually had to scale back their opposition to the government in order not to encourage an invasion.”

In his mania to embroil America in yet another disastrous war, Kristol will no doubt simply dismiss these views, just as he dismissed Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen’s warning against U.S. strikes on Iran as “silly.” But given Kristol’s record of being wrong on most of the key foreign policy questions of our era, it’s clear whose views should actually be dismissed.

Our guest blogger is David Halperin, assistant director of Israel Policy Forum.

With Sunday’s deadline for Israel’s ten-month settlement moratorium fast approaching, both sides are preparing for the blame game should the talks break down. One of the key buzz words being thrown about this week is “precondition.” As in, ‘the Palestinians should not be setting a precondition that Israel continue the settlement freeze in order to keep the talks going.’

In his conference call with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization this week, Prime Minister Netanyahu told the audience of Jewish leaders “We got rid of the preconditions before the talks. We can’t reintroduce them five minutes after the talks begin.” In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon echoed the sentiment, stating: “Israel will not accept an all or nothing approach, or any ultimatums or any preconditions.” (Of course, in the same interview, Ayalon effectively stated a precondition of his own, saying: “What I say is that if the Palestinians are not willing to talk about two states for two peoples, let alone a Jewish state for Israel, then there’s nothing to talk about.”)

The precondition message has reached Capitol Hill, where one staffer told Foreign Policy, “Many Capitol Hill office[s] see Abbas quitting the talks over the settlements as him using the same issue he was clinging to when trying to set preconditions for the talks in the first place.”

But certainly when it comes to Hamas, Israel doesn’t think preconditions should be discarded. Israel’s – and the Quartet’s – preconditions for speaking with Hamas, require that it 1) renounce violence 2) accept previous agreements and 3) recognize Israel’s right to exist are currently an unshakeable aspect of Israel’s policy. To note, the PA led by Mahmoud Abbas has, of course, done all three.

When it comes to Syria, Israelis have been mixed on the idea of preconditions. The previous government led by Ehud Olmert demanded Syria cut ties to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran before direct talks would begin. However, to his credit, Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that Israel is prepared to hold negotiations without preconditions with the Syrians, and Shimon Peres underscored the point in his remarks to the United Nations General Assembly. We may soon see whether actions match rhetoric in this regard.

But whether or not preconditions are helpful – or harmful – to peace processes is one question to be considered. What is not a question is that a settlement freeze is not a precondition — it’s an Israeli obligation.

The Roadmap states:

In Phase I, the Palestinians immediately undertake an unconditional cessation of violence according to the steps outlined below; such action should be accompanied by supportive measures undertaken by Israel. Palestinians and Israelis resume security cooperation based on the Tenet work plan to end violence, terrorism, and incitement through restructured and effective Palestinian security services. Palestinians undertake comprehensive political reform in preparation for statehood, including drafting a Palestinian constitution, and free, fair and open elections upon the basis of those measures. Israel takes all necessary steps to help normalize Palestinian life. Israel withdraws from Palestinian areas occupied from September 28, 2000 and the two sides restore the status quo that existed at that time, as security performance and cooperation progress. Israel also freezes all settlement activity, consistent with the Mitchell report.

The Palestinian efforts to reform their governmental infrastructure, curb terrorism, and strengthen Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation are well documented. They have even been hailed by Israelis.

Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad told an audience of Jewish leaders this week that, while they have made progress on their obligation, more needed to be done, particularly in curbing incitement. “I don’t think one can ever say that we have done everything that could possibly be done… but we are trying,” Fayyad said. “Incitement is a problem and we see it as such.”

The Israeli efforts have also been promising. Israel has enabled the Palestinian security apparatus to function, has eliminated a number of roadblocks and checkpoints, helping to create conditions for significant economic growth in the West Bank.

But Israel’s obligations scorecard has one glaring omission: “freez(ing) all settlement activity consistent with the Mitchell Report.”

The Mitchell Report, drafted in 2001 by the current Special Envoy for Middle East for the previous Administration states: “The GOI [Government of Israel] should freeze all settlement activity, including the ‘natural growth’ of existing settlements.”

The U.S. tried to get Israel to agree to this obligation at the onset of the Obama administration. Netanyahu refused, tensions emerged, and peace talks stalled. Now, the US is asking for an extension of the ten-month moratorium that Israel instituted as a compromise. Even less, the United States has signaled it would support a formula that comes short of a continuation of the partial freeze already in place.

The Palestinians now say that they too would be willing to compromise on the continuation of the not-so-full-freeze, freeze. Recent reports indicating that the United States is working with the parties to develop such a formula provide some hope that a deal can be reached at the last moment.

It’s important to understand that Israel is being asked only to continue a portion of the step it has taken, which only partially meets its obligation under the Roadmap. Yet is claiming that its refusal to do so — and the Palestinians’ subsequently crying foul — amounts to the Palestinians presenting an unnecessary precondition which harms the potential for peace. Or, in other words, the games have begun. Whether they’ll continue past the weekend is less clear.

For more details on the political issues at play in these negotiations, please see Matt Duss’ and my new report, Navigating Political Currents to Achieve Middle East Peace.

Rachel Sladja over at TPM Muckraker has a good report looking into the roots of the Sharia Peril hysteria that, over the past year, has moved from the right-wing fringe into the mainstream conservative discourse, courtesy of people like Newt Gingrich. This nonsense went into a higher gear last week with the neocon Center for Security Policy’s release of a new “Team B II” report, Sharia: The Threat To America.

In addition to being based on a deeply tendentious and unscholarly rendering of Islamic sharia law as a monolithic and singularly interpreted legal doctrine (which Lee Smith picked apart here), Sladja finds that the main piece of “evidence” for the looming sharia threat is a 1991 strategy paper written by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, telling followers they “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”

Twenty years later, I think it’s safe to say that this strategy has not been a smashing success. But it’s worth taking a closer look at the organization that, according to Team B II, is on the cusp of prying the barbecued pork rib from my cold, dead hand.

In an article last week, Carnegie’s Nathan Brown recalled a meeting in which Muslim Brotherhood members struggled to remember the name of their current religious guide. “How disciplined and well-organized can an international organization be,” Brown asked, “when followers struggle to recall their supreme leader’s name?”

In press interviews, personal meetings, and material designed for their own members, Muslim Brotherhood leaders in various Arab countries refer very respectfully to the Brotherhood way of doing things but almost never to the authority or even existence of the international organization. Yet increasingly, awareness of Islamist movements in the West has lead to some dark talk of an international Brotherhood that serves as a cover for all sorts of missionary, political, and even violent activity. From a solid core in the Arab world, the Brotherhood’s tentacles are said to be reaching out from Oslo to Oklahoma City. [...]

At a global level, the Brotherhood is no Mafia. Nor is it a rigid and disciplined Stalinist-style Comintern. It most closely resembles today’s Socialist International: a tame framework for a group of loosely linked, ideologically similar movements that recognize each other, swap stories and experiences in occasional meetings, and happily subscribe to a formally international ideology without giving it much priority. There is every reason to be interested in the Brotherhood’s myriad (and surprisingly diverse) country branches, but there is no reason to fear it as a menacing global web.

This is the organization that Team B II leader Frank Gaffney and his gang would have us believe represent, “if anything, an even more insidious ideological threat” than did the Soviet Union.

Are there Muslim missionaries in the U.S. right now who want to get Americans to adopt Islam? Yes, just as there are Christian missionaries in Indonesia who want to get Indonesians to worship Jesus. Christianity and Islam are both evangelizing religions. Spreading the faith is part of the program.

Are there also radical Muslims in America right now trying to find ways to turn the U.S. into a religious state? Most likely, yes, and we should be on guard against it. It’s worth noting, however, that the Christian Right has failed at this for decades, in a country where over 75% of people identify as Christian. So good luck with that, radical Muslims.

To put it plainly, the idea that the Muslim Brotherhood is making “real progress…in insinuating shariah into the very heartland of America through stealthy means,” as the Team B II report claims, is preposterous. And, probably needless to say, it’s utterly unsupported by any real evidence.

But the real goal here, of course, isn’t to accurately describe the threat of Islamic radicalism, it’s to help conservatives regain power. As Gaffney himself wrote earlier this year, “Even if a robust security-policy platform were not, on the merits, the right stance for the right, it has proven repeatedly to be the winningest stance politically, especially in times when our countrymen properly feel insecure.” The goal of “Team B II,” as with the rest of the neoconservative faction, is to make sure that now is one of those times.

Back in June, the United Farm Workers (UFW) launched their “Take Our Jobs” campaign which invites American citizens and legal residents to fill the farm jobs that are mostly occupied by undocumented labor. Comedian Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” traveled to a farm in upstate New York and spent ten hours “picking beans, packing corn and learning about the stark reality facing Americans farms and farmers.”

Today, Colbert testified before the House Judiciary subcommittee on his experience as an entertainer-turned-migrant worker. As part of his testimony, Colbert called for more visas for farmworkers

This brief experience gave me some small understanding of why so few Americans are clamoring to begin an exciting career as seasonal migrant field worker. So what’s the answer? I’m a free market guy. Normally I would leave this to the invisible hand of the market, but the invisible hand of the market has already moved over 84,000 acres of production and over 22,000 farm jobs over to Mexico and shut down over a million acres of U.S. farm land due to lack of available labor because apparently even the invisible hand doesn’t want to pick beans. [...]

Maybe we could give more visas to the immigrants, who — let’s face it — will probably be doing these jobs anyway. And this improved legal status might allow legal immigrants recourse if they’re abused. And it justs stands to reason to me if your coworker can’t be exploited, then you’re less likely to be exploited yourself. And that itself might improve pay and working conditions on these farms and eventually Americans may consider taking these jobs again.

Or maybe that’s crazy. Maybe the easier answer is just to have scientists develop vegetables that pick themselves.

Watch it:

Agriculture is ranked amongst the three most hazardous occupations in the nation. For every 100,000 agricultural workers in the U.S. in 2007, there were 25.7 occupational deaths. That’s because farmworkers are exposed to toxic pesticides, work under the hot sun for 10-12 hours a day, handle hazardous tools and machinery, and live in crowded conditions with poor sanitation. In return, most farmworkers earn approximately $28,040 a year.

The solution to improving farm jobs is two-fold: fixing the immigration system as Colbert mentioned and also improving wages and working conditions in the agricultural sector. Yet, as long as most farmworkers feel that they can’t report abuses and fight for their rights without fear of deportation or retaliation agricultural work will remain a grueling, dangerous, and thankless career that most Americans have no interest in pursuing. As Colbert briefly noted, if the U.S. doesn’t find a way to legalize immigrant agricultural workers, businesses will continue moving their operations to other countries where they can find laborers.

Contrary to what Swain and other immigration hawks suggest, despite a major recession, most farmers and ranchers are still struggling to find the workers they need. “Comprehensive immigration reform is needed, so that America’s farmers and ranchers can continue to produce an abundant supply of safe, healthy food, as well as renewable fuels and fiber for our nation,” writes Ron Gaskill, director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation

Initially, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) asked Colbert to leave the room without delivering his testimony. However, Conyers indicated he changed his mind after hearing the testimony of Dr. Carol M. Swain who denied that there is a shortage of agricultural workers and called it “a manufactured crisis.”

In various recent interviews over the past week, President Obama has slammed Republicans for refusing to cooperate with Democrats on passing either the DREAM Act or comprehensive immigration reform. “Under the pressures of partisanship and election year politics, most of the 11 Republican senators who voted for that [immigration] reform just four years ago have backed far away from that vote today,” said Obama during a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “Without the kind of bipartisan effort we had just a few short years ago, we can’t get these reforms across the finish line.”

If the GOP’s “Pledge to America” is any indication, it doesn’t appear a bipartisan effort is going to happen any time soon. The 48-page pre-election document styled after 1994′s Contract with America ambiguously discusses immigration in its section on national security. Yet, despite being a hot-button issue this election season, none of the vaguely worded immigration bullet points reference immigration reform itself. In fact, during today’s press conference, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) evaded a question regarding the absence of an immigration reform platform:

REPORTER: What is the proposal on what to do about the 12 million, 12.5 million undocumented immigrants in this country?

BOEHNER: You’re asking about something that’s not in the document?

REPORTER: Yes, I think that a lot of Americans are debating comprehensive immigration reform and I’m wondering what the position is and frankly why it’s not in the document.

BOEHNER: Well I think it’s pretty clear in the document that the first steps for real immigration reform are to secure our borders and enforce our laws — two things that are in our Pledge to America.

Watch it:

The reporter tried to ask a follow-up question but was immediately cut off by Boehner who wanted to move on to the next question.

The “Pledge” does propose an enforcement-only approach to immigration and appears to endorse and promote Arizona-like immigration policies:

Work with State and Local Officials to Enforce Our Immigration Laws
The problem of illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartels engaged in an increasingly violent conflict means we need all hands on deck to address this challenge. We will reaffirm the authority of state and local law enforcement to assist in the enforcement of all federal immigration laws.

Lumped in with proposals on Iran sanctions, missile defense, and terrorism, the “Pledge” also vows to “take actions to secure our borders, and that action starts with enforcing our laws.” The GOP apparently thinks it will accomplish this goal by simply giving border patrol the tools they need and prohibiting the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture “from interfering with Border Patrol enforcement activities on federal lands.”

The document also indirectly references the defense reauthorization bill which Republicans blocked this week in part because it included the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act as an amendment. Republicans argued that adding a provision that would have the potential effect of boosting U.S. military ranks to a defense bill was “extraneous.” The “Pledge” reaffirms the GOP’s commitment to blocking similar legislative action in the future by calling for “no more troop funding bills held up by unrelated policy changes, or extraneous domestic spending and pork-barrel projects.”

Given that 54% of all Americans regard the immigration issue as “very important” and that a majority of voters — across party lines — support immigration reform it’s surprising the GOP didn’t provide more details. It’s an especially big hole considering that Republicans have not hesitated to politicize the issue this election season.

This isn’t a national security election. But the United States still has more than 100,000 troops engaged in combat in two different countries. You would think that if you were the opposition party laying out your plan for American that would be worth a mention, no?

In the 45 page “Pledge to America,” subtitled “a new governing agenda built on the priorities of our nation,” the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq apparently don’t amount to a GOP priority worth mentioning.

The words Iraq and Afghanistan are mentioned once each in the entire document and the one mention is in reference to sanctions about Iran. What makes this stranger is that an entire section of the “pledge” is devoted to the GOP’s plan for national security.

There are platitudes of course. It notes “we are a nation at war” and there is one bullet on pledging to “pass clean troop funding bills” (something Republicans never did during the last decade). But there is no plan for Iraq or Afghanistan. There is no mention of how Republicans plan to deal with either war, no notion that things could be done differently, and no acknowledgement that this year was the deadliest year in Afghanistan. One would think that the opposition party in the United States would have something to say about the war in Afghanistan — a war that appears to be floundering.

The lack of any serious mention of the wars is a telling sign that war has been taken as a given by the House GOP. There is no sense of urgency or need to challenge or question the existing war plans. In other words, it is no longer on their radar, war is simply a fact of life. As a result, war in perpetuity is simply a given under the GOP. This also demonstrates a real callousness. American men and women are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan and the GOP doesn’t even see this sacrifice as something worth mentioning.

More broadly, however, the national security component shows that the GOP has no actual vision for how they think the world’s leading superpower should operate in the world. Of the eight points in the plan devoted to national security three are devoted to immigration and border control, two to Guantanamo and detention policy, one to missile defense (of course), one to tough enforcement of Iran sanctions, and one to the above mentioned clean funding bills. The fact that more than half the points are devoted to keeping people out of America, indicates that the GOP House leadership simply doesn’t know how it wants to engage the world.

All the “pledge” tells us therefore, is that the House GOP will support war in perpetuity and that it has no concrete ideas about what America’s foreign policy should be.

The Bush administration has long maintained they had not decided to invade Iraq until the days before it actually began and that they did “everything” they could to “avoid war in Iraq.” President Bush even claimed that the “American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war.”

Yet there is evidence that the Bush administration, from its very early days, was actively plotting to go to war with the Arab country. From a British memo that noted that “Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme” to memoirs by administration members Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neill, there have been numerous disclosures that strongly suggest that the Bush administration was plotting a war against Iraq while recognizing it was not a threat to the United States.

Now, with the help of a Freedom of Information Act request, the National Security Archive has obtained a newly declassified document that details talking points that emerged from a meeting between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and CENTCOM Commander General Tommy Franks in November 2001.

The talking points mainly revolve around the logistical planning for a war in Iraq. They detail the “decapitation” of the Iraqi government by U.S. forces and make regime change the goal. Interestingly, they already mention U.S. forces “coming out of Afghanistan” to join the invasion of Iraq. Yet the most alarming part of the document is a bullet point titled, “How start?” (which is a discussion that actually appears after the planning of the entire war). The participants in the Rumsfeld-Frank meeting discussed possible ways to provoke a conflict with Iraq, including an attack by Saddam Hussein against the Kurdish north, the U.S. discovering a “Saddam connection” to 9/11 or the anthrax attacks, or a dispute over WMD inspections. It appears from the language of the talking points that the Bush administration had already decided to go to war with Iraq and was looking for an opportunity to invade:

Another document obtained by the National Security Archive shows that the Bush State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research created an assessment of international support for a war against Iraq in December 2001. It noted that the “UK’s Blair would publicly support a US decision to bomb Iraq but would face considerable criticism.” It worried that going to war in Iraq could “bring radicalization of British Muslims, the great majority whom opposed the September 11 attacks but are increasingly restive about what they see as an anti-Islamic campaign.” These fears appear to have been prescient, as in July 2005 British Muslim extremists apparently radicalized by the war in Iraq detonated bombs throughout London.

President Obama used his speech to the United Nations General Assembly today to issue a challenge to the international community to support the Israel-Palestinian peace process:

Many in this hall count themselves as friends of the Palestinians. But these pledges must now be supported by deeds. Those who have signed on to the Arab Peace Initiative should seize this opportunity to make it real by describing and demonstrating the normalization that it promises Israel. Those who speak out for Palestinian self-government should help the Palestinian Authority with political and financial support, and – in so doing – help the Palestinians build the institutions of their state. And those who long to see an independent Palestine rise must stop trying to tear Israel down.

After thousands of years, Jews and Arabs are not strangers in a strange land. And after sixty years in the community of nations, Israel’s existence must not be a subject for debate. Israel is a sovereign state, and the historic homeland of the Jewish people. It should be clear to all that efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of the United States. And efforts to threaten or kill Israelis will do nothing to help the Palestinian people — the slaughter of innocent Israelis is not resistance, it is injustice. Make no mistake: the courage of a man like President Abbas — who stands up for his people in front of the world — is far greater than those who fire rockets at innocent women and children.

It would have been nice to see some reference to Israel’s obligations here, at the very least a mention of the word “occupation,” in the speech, which, apart from reiterating the Quartet’s call for Israel to extend its settlement moratorium, focused exclusively on the responsibilities of Israel’s neighbors. I doubt the lack of such references will calm the president’s conservative critics, who will continue to label him “anti-Israel,” despite the fact that the Israeli Prime Minister, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., and AIPAC all disagree.

It’s worth noting President Obama’s reference to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative — he stated that those who signed it “should seize this opportunity to make it real by describing and demonstrating the normalization that it promises Israel” — in light of Secretary of State Clinton’s hailing of it on Wednesday as a “groundbreaking initiative [that] provided a far-sighted vision for comprehensive regional peace.” Clinton called “the principles enshrined in the Arab Peace Initiative” — which offered full normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 and the creation of a Palestinian state — “more important than ever.” Israel has yet to formally respond to that offer.

It’s easy — and, given the state of negotiations, on a knife’s edge over whether Israel will extend its settlement moratorium and amid some of the worst unrest in East Jerusalem in years, probably not entirely incorrect — to be cynical about the prospects for a peace deal in the near future. But it’s a testament to the centrality of the conflict to a number of other U.S. challenges in the region, and the strong U.S. national security consensus around the reality of those linkages, that the president has chosen to put his political and diplomatic capital, and America’s, behind this effort right now.

One interesting tidbit highlighted in the Washington Post story on the new Bob Woodward book is a President, in stark contrast to his predecessor, that is strongly concerned by the threat of nuclear terrorism. The Washington Post notes:

A classified exercise in May showed that the government was woefully unprepared to deal with a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States. The scenario involved the detonation of a small, crude nuclear weapon in Indianapolis and the simultaneous threat of a second blast in Los Angeles. Obama, in the interview with Woodward, called a nuclear attack here “a potential game changer.” He said: “When I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that’s one where you can’t afford any mistakes.”

While President Bush also claimed to share this concern and in the 2004 national security debate with John Kerry cited it as the most serious potential threat, the Bush administration did little to actually address it. This is not only evident in the lack of preparedness of the US at the time of Bush’s departure, but the lack of any big high-level international initiatives to address the threat. Instead, as Ambassador Robert Gallucci noted, the Bush administration was “sleepwalking on these issues.”

In stark contrast, the Obama administration hasn’t just paid lip service to the threat, it is actually taking steps to eliminate it. The Nuclear Security Summit that was held in Washington this past April elevated nuclear security to the top of the international agenda and put forth concrete work plans that advance the President’s goal of securing all loose nuclear materials within four years.

Yet despite being the largest gathering of heads of state in the US since the founding of the UN, the summit drew more attention from the Washington-based press corps for the traffic jams it caused than for the substantive purpose behind the gathering. Similarly, conservatives greeted the conference with a big yawn, saying sure it was important but it didn’t deal with the real “threat” of Iran. The reaction to the summit not only demonstrated how media coverage is essentially driven by horse-race politics, or alternatively by what conservatives think matter, but it also exposed how totally disconnected the right is with global political realities.

The nuclear terrorist threat is ultimately a trans-national threat that is rooted in the weakness of states, not the strengths. States in the former Soviet bloc that have nuclear materials, suffer from the decay of state institutions, and have a developed criminal black market are the frontlines in this fight. Once materials hit the black market, it is quite straight forward for terrorist groups to acquire them. In other words, a nuclear terrorist, just like a 9-11 terrorist, doesn’t need the support of any state actor.

Yet the right-wing national security establishment frankly does not comprehend the existence of non-state actors. Instead, everything is a state-based threat. By dismissing the Nuclear Security Summit as irrelevant because it didn’t directly address the “real” nuclear threat of Iran, as Charles Krauthammer did, the right only exposed their cluelessness. The fact is that the only way to combat nuclear terrorism is to get other countries to do mundane tasks to secure and consolidate their nuclear and radiological materials so they don’t fall into the hands of criminals and terrorists. One of the reasons the Bush administration paid lip service but did little to address the nuclear terror threat is because it ultimately requires multilateralism to address the threat. The United States can’t single handedly secure every countries’ nuclear materials. It can’t bomb criminal networks.

And, as a result, the right simply isn’t interested in this reality-based national security issue, even though it poses the most likely nuclear threat. You don’t see right wing national security conferences on how we can secure loose nuclear materials. No, instead you get bizarre conferences on some imagined EMP threat. You get arguments that nuclear security is all about building more nuclear weapons and missile defense. You get a hyper focus on states like Iraq, now Iran, that to the right are somehow intimately linked to Al Qaeda. You get a world view that is part cold war, part sci-fi futurist fantasy that is simply divorced from the reality of a modern globalizing world in which national borders increasingly mean less and in which global challenges and threats require collective global efforts.

In an interview with Bob Woodward earlier this year, President Obama said, “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever. … We absorbed it and we are stronger.” That confident portrayal of American resilience has been seized upon by right wing pundits. As Ken Gude notes on the Wonk Room, “conservative critics won’t tolerate this kind of reasoned leadership” from Obama. For instance, consider the following statement Liz Cheney released today:

This comment suggests an alarming fatalism on the part of President Obama and his administration. Once again the President seems either unwilling or unable to do what it takes to keep this nation safe. The President owes the American people an explanation.

Recall, Cheney’s father — the former vice president of the United States — told Meet the Press’s Tim Russert in 2002 that another terrorist attack was “almost a certainty.” He added it that it was only a matter of time before the U.S. got hit again:

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: The prospect of another attack against the United States is very, very real. It’s just as real, in my opinion, as it was September 12.

TIM RUSSERT, NBC News: Not a matter of if, but when?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Not a matter of if, but when.

Is Liz Cheney outraged that her father stated that another terrorist attack on the homeland is a certain eventuality? She’s probably unaware that the Bush White House put out the following national security document that laid out a strategy of being “better able to absorb the impact” of a terrorist attack:

For each CI/KR [critical infrastructure and key resources] sector, we must collectively work to ensure the ability of power, communications, and other life sustaining systems to survive an attack by terrorists, a natural disaster, and other assessed risks or hazards. In the past, investments in redundant and duplicative infrastructure were used to achieve this objective. We must now focus on the resilience of the system as a whole – an approach that centers on investments that make the system better able to absorb the impact of an event without losing the capacity to function.

Perhaps Liz Cheney should demand an explanation from her father.