Bucking nearly 30 years of dictatorial rule, the Egyptian people peacefully compelled President Hosni Mubarak to relinquish power in early February. While many nations heralded the success of Egypt’s pro-democracy movement, Israel’s right-wing government views “elections in Egypt [as] dangerous” and clung to the hope that its “close friend” and ally Mubarak would weather the democratic protests and remain in power. Despite the U.S.’s dismissal of this view, the Israeli government’s decision to side with a dictator over democracy found support among a wide array of right-wing figures.

For instance, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), GOP Conference Chair Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), former Ambassador John Bolton, likely presidential candidate Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AK), and Fox News host Glenn Beck seemed comfortable championing the autocratic rule of a deposed dictator. However, the Bush Administration’s Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz had a different word for it: “crazy.”

On Fareed Zakaria GPS yesterday, Wolfowitz pointed out that “Israelis should welcome what’s happened in Egypt” instead of clinging to a “misplaced” nostalgia about an “irrelevant” regime. Wolfowitz also slammed the right-wing habit marginalizing Muslims as “dangerous,” adding “we shouldn’t say anyone who is of that faith is a problem, they are our best allies.”

ZAKARIA: You have people on the right effectively saying that the Obama Administration junked Mubarak too soon, that they should’ve supported him more, that they are allying for the rise of an Islamic caliphate. And of course the Israelis who really do seem to have deep Mubarak nostalgia.

WOLFOWITZ: It’s crazy. The Israelis should welcome what’s happened in Egypt. If only cynically, I mean, they — instead of associating themselves with a dead regime, they should try to find allies in Egypt. And I would assume there are millions of Egyptians who do not want to restart a war with Israel. And Mubarak wasn’t such a great bargain. He filled the Egyptian state-controlled media with anti-American junk, with anti-Israeli junk, even with violently anti-Semitic junk. So — but the nostalgia — I think the nostalgia is misplaced, but it’s completely irrelevant now. They and we should be thinking about the future.

ZAKARIA: What about the American right? Has it become so fearful of some kind of radical Islam that it is losing sight of the importance of democracy in your view?

WOLFOWITZ:…The view that I would like to associate with is the one I think of is Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan who believed that support for freedom, support for democracy is not only something that is morally important for the United States but equally, is strategically important that a freer, more democratic world is good for us….There is a dangerous argument I think that almost says if your a Muslim and you’re not an extremist, then you’re not a good Muslim. And that’s coming from people who aren’t Muslims at all….We shouldn’t say anyone who is of that faith is a problem, they are our best allies.

Watch it:

Unfortunately for Wolfowitz and other sober-minded national security experts, the GOP is committed to dragging Muslims through the mud. Dismissing Wolfowitz’s experience as “political correctness,” Rep. Peter King (R-NY) will begin his anti-American Muslim hearings on March 9 to prove that America’s “best allies” are somehow “the enemies within” — despite all evidence to the contrary.

Last year, when Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón condemned Arizona’s immigration law, he was called “arrogant and hypocritical.” According to his critics, Mexico has tougher immigration laws in place than Arizona does. The massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants who were brutally tortured and killed by drug cartel operatives in Mexico on their way to the U.S. this past summer increased pressure on Calderón to fix Mexico’s own broken immigration system.

Largely in response, the Mexican Senate approved a newly modified Immigration Law to protect and guarantee the human rights of migrants in the country this past Friday. The approved legislation allows migrants in Mexico to access health and legal services and grants them the opportunity to regularize their immigration status. It is specifically aimed at decriminalizing immigration and removing penalties to prevent the rampant kidnapping and murder of migrants travelling through Mexico. Currently, undocumented immigration in Mexico is considered a minor offense punishable with fines. The hope is that the new bill will decrease the vulnerability of migrants and prevent corrupt police and criminals from exploiting them. The legislation passed just a couple of days after Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission released a report which found that at least 11,333 migrants were kidnapped in Mexico during a six-month span of 2010.

The original version of the legislation was not as welcoming. Article 26 of the bill essentially charged Federal Police with the enforcement of immigration law. Article 151 imposed heavy fines and sanctions on undocumented immigrants and those who hire them. Yet, Mexican senators avoided the temptation to confront immigration with an iron fist. Both provisions were removed and the modified version passed the Mexican Senate with a unanimous vote. “We took out article 26 entirely because we want to send a clear signal that the Senate is aware of the contribution and the value that immigrants bring to our country,” explained Mexican Senator Humberto Andrade. “The new immigration law is a modern, advanced, integrated solution, which permits us to take our place as a country with a congruent human rights policy, and with the moral ability to demand of other countries respect for our nationals.”

According to Andrade, the new version of the bill not only excludes Article 26, it also indicates that law enforcement cannot verify immigration status beyond customs and border checkpoints. If that is true, then the legislature would essentially overturn Article 67 of Mexico’s immigration law which requires law enforcement to demand that foreigners prove their legal presence in the country.

Father Alejandro Solalinde, a Catholic priest who runs a migrant shelter in Mexico and has been a sharp critic of the country’s immigration policy, praised the reforms, stating that Mexico is on the verge of overcoming a “milestone.” In the meantime, the legislation is still pending in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies — where it is expected to pass.

Earlier this week, I wrote about a new bill — SB-1611 — that was introduced by Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), sponsor of Arizona’s SB-1070 immigration law. Pearce’s new legislation, which he refers to as “clean-up,” would require parents to provide proof of their childrens’ immigration status when enrolling them in school, require the school to report the families that do not comply to the police, make it illegal for undocumented immigrants to drive a vehicle, and make it a criminal misdemeanor to allow an undocumented person to live in public housing. Pearce, who claims he is fighting an “invasion,” has also stated that “If you’re in the country illegally you don’t have the right to public benefits…It’s called theft.”

It turns out immigrant and civil rights advocates aren’t the only ones claiming that the bill is unconstitutional. Fox News legal analyst, Andrew Napolitano — who is usually counted on to provide a right-wing voice — dismissed Pearce’s efforts entirely:

This is a very very clear cut case, in part because of Senator Pearce’s erroneous statements…that the whole motivation behind this [SB-1611] is his belief that the ought to deny benefits to those who are here illegally. In fact, as you know, the law is the opposite.

Watch it:

For the record, undocumented immigrants do not qualify for most public benefits. However, the purpose of Pearce’s bill isn’t to rearticulate federal law. As Napolitano notes, his bill challenges it.

Undocumented immigrants cannot directly receive federal housing benefits. Yet Pearce’s bill goes a step farther by preventing an entire family living in a public housing unit, even if just one member of the family is undocumented. The provision directly challenges federal authority. The Tucson Housing and Community Development has already announced that it will not comply with SB-1611 if it passes because “federal rules trump state rules.”

Meanwhile, although SB-1611 does not directly deny undocumented children an education, it certainly seeks to create barriers. In Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court ruled that such efforts were unconstitutional. Justice William Brennan wrote that the purpose of the Equal Protection Clause is “the abolition of governmental barriers presenting unreasonable obstacles to advancement on the basis of individual merit.” The Court further noted, that “[i]t is difficult to understand precisely what the State hopes to achieve by promoting the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime.”

Finally, driving isn’t a public benefit. However, according to the Fifth Amendment, the government can’t deprive anyone of property without due process. SB-1611 would confiscate and resell the vehicle of any undocumented immigrant caught driving.

The Arizona Senate Appropriations Committee approved the bill in a 7-6 vote. Two of the nine Republicans on the panel broke with their party and voted “no” — which some claim signals an “uncertain future for SB 1611 when it goes to the full Senate.”

Writing in today’s Washington Times, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon offers the latest entry in the never-ending effort by Israeli and American conservatives to downplay the significance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

The last few weeks and months have finally proven the fallacy of one of the most mistaken theories about development and peace in the Middle East. For a number of years, foreign officials, experts and commentators have claimed that if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was solved, then there would be peace in the Middle East. This was coined “linkage.” [...]

The WikiLeaks revelations proved that among Arab decision makers and policy-shapers, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was fairly low on the list of urgent priorities in the region. These private conversations reveal that Arab leaders are preoccupied with the looming threat of Iran and only make perfunctory statements on the “Palestinian question,” as one senior American diplomat who has spent his career in the Middle East told the New York Times recently.

These revelations shook the linkage argument to its very foundations, but recent events in our region have dealt it the mortal blow.

In keeping with the rules of this genre, Ayalon’s presentation of the linkage argument is an obvious straw man. No one has ever claimed “if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was solved, then there would be peace in the Middle East.”

The actual linkage argument was probably best articulated by Gen. David Petraeus in his statement (pdf) to Congress last March, in which he cited “Insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace” as one of the key challenges to security and stability in the region:

The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [area of responsibility]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.

As I showed in an article for Foreign Policy, Ayalon’s claim about WikiLeaks is simply false. In fact, the WikiLeaks documents revealed Arab leaders bringing up the Palestinian issue with almost as much frequency as Iran. Read the statements for yourself and decide whether they seem “perfunctory.” Read more

As Col. Muammar Qaddafi begins to lose control of his country to anti-government protesters, the Libyan dictator announced this week that he won’t go down without a fight. In a rambling speech on Tuesday, Qaddafi vowed to track down and kill protesters “house by house.” “I will fight on to the last drop of my blood,” he said. In fact, forces loyal to Qaddafi launched a counter offensive today, and to date, the unrest has already claimed hundreds — if not thousands — of lives.

President Obama yesterday condemned the Libyan government for of using violence to quell demonstrations and said he asked his team “to prepare the full range of options that we have to respond to this crisis.” But unlike with U.S. allies Bahrain and Egypt, the White House has limited options to assert much leverage with the Libyan government. While some rights groups have offered ideas on how to positively influence the situation, CAP’s John Norris and Sarah Margon note that the White House “needs to convince Libyan business leaders that Qaddafi is a liability they can no longer afford” and since Libya is Africa’s largest oil producing country, a good place to start would be the oil industry:

One doesn’t normally look to oil companies to do the right thing. But they now have an enormous vested interest in helping push Qaddafi out. Libya has Africa’s largest crude oil reserves and the uncertainty in that country has already started to rattle markets. If Qaddafi stays on his current course and remains Libya’s leader, there will invariably be calls for an oil embargo from Libya, a proper U.N. war crimes investigation, and possibly a civil war. The oil business will be disrupted for a considerable period under all of those scenarios.

The situation in Libya “has been the immediate cause for the spike in oil prices recently” and the industry is worried about greater negative effects on the oil markets. But Qaddafi doesn’t appear to be concerned about markets, let alone his own people. In addition to promising all out war with anti-government demonstrators in order to maintain power, he has also reportedly ordered his security forces to institute an if-all-else-fails-slash-and-burn policy — starting with Libya’s oil, as Time Magazine reports:

There’s been virtually no reliable information coming out of Tripoli, but a source close to the Gaddafi regime I did manage to get hold of told me the already terrible situation in Libya will get much worse. Among other things, Gaddafi has ordered security services to start sabotaging oil facilities. They will start by blowing up several oil pipelines, cutting off flow to Mediterranean ports. The sabotage, according to the insider, is meant to serve as a message to Libya’s rebellious tribes: It’s either me or chaos.

While Libya produces only 2 percent of the world’s oil supply, most of its exports go to Europe, which would be directly effected by any more turmoil in the industry. But oil is a world commodity, and the rest of the world, including the United States, is still “addicted to oil” and thus is “not immune to the price shock waves.”

Read more about the situation in Libya in today’s Progress Report.

Michael Slackman of the New York Times penned a front page story arguing that the slew of popular revolts are strengthening Iran in the region. Iran analysts Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett have also adopted this view. But the premise seems to rest on a crude “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic that posits that because the protests are removing and unsettling adversaries of Iran ergo Iran is the big winner. But in fact, Iran is likely going to be a loser in the region as the result of the protests.

Slackman writes:

The popular revolts shaking the Arab world have begun to shift the balance of power in the region, bolstering Iran’s position while weakening and unnerving its rival, Saudi Arabia, regional experts said… Saudi Arabia, an American ally and a Sunni nation that jousts with Shiite Iran for regional influence, has been shaken… The uprisings are driven by domestic concerns. But they have already shredded a regional paradigm in which a trio of states aligned with the West supported engaging Israel and containing Israel’s enemies, including Hamas and Hezbollah, experts said. The pro-engagement camp of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia is now in tatters.

It is no doubt the case that Saudi Arabia has been shaken and the previous regional paradigm, noted above by Slackman, is in tatters. But this is not because of anything done by Iran. It is because of the emergence of liberal popular revolts and the potential reemergence of Egypt as the focal point of the region.

What we could be seeing is the rise of a third paradigm – a more liberal paradigm embodied by Egypt that will diminish the influence of not just Saudi Arabia, but of Iran as well. While a democratic outcome in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya and elsewhere is far from certain, the popular revolts were clearly liberal revolts and have provided a new model for the region. Egypt is the largest Arab country and has long been a regional trend setter. With a new popularly elected government in Cairo, Egypt will likely be much more influential than the Mubarak regime in Middle East affairs. This combined with the fact that it is largely a Sunni-Arab country, while Iran is largely Shia-Persian, Iran will likely lose some influence to Egypt.

One of Iran’s main assets in the region has been unique political system. Iran was the one country in the region to overthrow a Western-backed dictator and was able to set up a quasi-democratic Islamic government that was, after Israel, the most democratic in the Middle East and seemed to provide its people with a degree of accountability rare in the region. Arabs living in repressive Western-backed authoritarian countries like Egypt could look to Iran as a source of inspiration, giving Iran an air of moral authority. In the last two years this moral authority has collapsed. The repression of the Green Movement has severely undercut the appeal of the Iranian model and has made Iran seem little different than other repressive regimes in the region. Iran’s appeal was therefore weakened before the popular revolts. Following the revolts, few are looking to the Iranian model for inspiration. Tehran is so 1979. Cairo is 2011. The Arab Street has a new model for transformation and it is in Cairo and Tunis not Tehran.

The other aspect of Iran’s appeal has been its anti-Israel stance. Its support of Hamas and Hezbollah, its rhetoric, and its nuclear program have positioned Iran as the major adversary of Israel in the region. On the Arab street, when regimes, like Mubarak, were “selling out” the Palestinians by either making peace or failing to challenge Israel, Iran positioned itself as the leading resistance leader. But following the popular revolts, the focus will no longer center on Tehran and Tel Aviv, but between Cairo and Tel Aviv. In fact, it is quite plausible to envision a scenario in which a less adversarial middle road opposition to Israel emerges out of Cairo that would stand in stark contrast to the stance of Iran. The Egyptian army has pledged not to tear up the peace treaty with Israel and there seems little desire for direct conflict. Yet a new popularly elected Egyptian government would also likely seek to place more pressure on Israel.

For Israel, this will no doubt prompt concern, since going from Mubarak, who was outwardly friendly to Israel, to a new government that will likely be at least somewhat more oppositional will likely put increased pressure on them. The new governments to emerge may also be much less pro-American than the ones that came before. But while Israel, and perhaps the US, might view this development negatively, when viewing through the lens of who has more influence in the region, it seems clear that Iran will now share the stage with Egypt as the focal point for relations with Israel.

Of course, all of this is conjecture. We have no idea how the transition will unfold in Cairo. But there is just as of a much reason, if not more, to believe Iran will be weakened, not strengthened by the popular uprisings.

Over the past few months, over a dozen immigration bills have been filed in the Texas legislature by lawmakers who are intent on getting tough on immigration. Most of the pieces of legislation are essentially carbon copies of bills that have been proposed in other state legislatures — namely Arizona’s. However, state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst (R) has introduced a bill that, to its credit, is certainly original. Kolkhorst’s legislation would allow local law enforcement officials to drop off undocumented immigrants at the doorstep of any U.S. senator or representative. The bill reads:

A law enforcement agency that has custody of an illegal immigrant to whom this article applies may:
(1) release or discharge the illegal immigrant at the office of a United States senator or United States representative during that office ’s normal business hours; and
(2) request an agent or employee of the United States senator or United States representative to sign a document acknowledging the release or discharge of the illegal immigrant at the senator ’s or representative ’s office.

The proposed bill only applies to undocumented immigrants who are about to be released on bail or discharged after completing a sentence. Meanwhile, it doesn’t provide any guidance on what a lawmaker should do with them.

“I want to address the point legally,” Kolkhorst told reporters. In a press release, she stated, “If passed, federal lawmakers may get some real-life examples of the severity of the problem facing our constituents and local law enforcement. The bill will spotlight parts of Texas where federal authorities are not enforcing their own immigration law.” “I want us to take these illegal immigrants in custody to a congressman’s office and say, ‘ We don’t know what to do with these people. Do you?,” she stated. Austin County Sheriff DeWayne Burger, who wishes the federal government would pick up more undocumented immigrants, called it a “feel good” law.

Of course, the law doesn’t really solve anything. It might embarrass a few lawmakers at the expense of the undocumented immigrants who are handed over and the taxpayers who have to pay for their transportation to Washington, DC. If Texan state lawmakers were actually serious about fixing the nation’s broken immigration system, they might consider putting pressure on their federal representatives to pass immigration reform. Instead, they’re focused on costly enforcement-only bills and cheap political stunts like Kolkhorst’s.

Meanwhile, thousands of people from all over the state of Texas converged in Austin yesterday to protest the anti-immigrant bills which are currently working their way through the state legislature.

Watch footage of the protests:

Many commentators have compared the situation unfolding in the Middle East to past revolutionary years. Anne Applebaum provides a useful piece on the challenges of making such comparisons, as she notes the messy nature of revolutions, particularly those in 1848. Country specific experts have also been quick to note, as protests spread, that each country is very different from the others. While this provides a useful corrective to those seeking to overdo the connections, with the developments in Libya it is clear that these experts are missing the forest from the trees.

2011 will be looked back as a year that brought about revolutionary change in the Middle East. This makes comparisons to 1848 and 1989 entirely appropriate. What we appear to be seeing today is the “third wave” of democratization finally coming to the Middle East. In just 20 years, from the mid-1970s to the 1990s, democracy spread rapidly from southern Europe to Latin America, to Africa, to Asia, to Eastern Europe. This wave of democratization skipped some countries, proved untenable in others and was weak in quite a few, but it also has fundamentally remade global politics and made the vast majority of countries in the world electoral democracies.

However, this wave, until now, had skipped over the Arab Middle East entirely. A combination of oil wealth, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the hypocrisy of Western democracies backing autocrat regimes, insulated the region from democratic change. But as this year is demonstrating, the Arab Middle East has not been immune to this radical change in the global political climate. Just as in the mid 1970s, when people in the authoritarian Southern European countries of Portugal, Greece, and Spain were well aware that the rest of Western Europe was prospering with democracy, the “Arab street” has similarly been well aware that much of the rest of the world has been getting on quite well with democracy over the last few decades.

Yet the yearning for change doesn’t explain the timing. Revolutions don’t simply develop in multiple countries in the same year (1848, 1989, 2011, even 1968) by coincidence. The countries impacted by the wave of uprisings during these years all operated in the same global environment and shared some broadly similar characteristics that spawned a desire for change among their populations. But what makes all these places ignite at the same time is ultimately because people are aware of what is happening elsewhere and are both inspired by those events and believe they too can bring about change.

To take to the streets against authoritarian regime takes a lot of guts. But it also requires a belief that others will join with you, that your feelings are widely shared, and crucially, that you can succeed. In this great take on what it takes to build a movement, Derek Sivers describes the “shirtless dancing guy theory of leadership.”

Similarly, the demonstration effect of Tunisia was essential in encouraging others in the region to take similar action. Tunisia created an example of a successful popular uprising that became a major motivating factor for other demonstrators around the region, especially in Egypt. After all, if it could happen there, why couldn’t it happen here? Once Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, this only added further energy to protests in Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Iran and Libya. In the Middle East, it’s clear the demonstration effect has been pronounced. This is a common trait of revolutionary years. In the photo above, anti-monarchist revolutionaries in France, Germany, and Italy, while distinct groups, are portrayed as all marching together (also note the vertical stripes of the German anti-monarchist flag that was inspired by the vertical stripes of the republican French tri-color). Popular uprisings inspire each other.

While conservatives are tripping over themselves to insist President Bush brought democracy to the Middle East by invading Iraq. In reality, this almost certainly set back the cause of democratization of the region. The American invasion and the chaos and ethnic violence that followed in Iraq was hardly a poster child for democracy. Furthermore, the popularity of the United States and of the West plummeted due to the invasion. The Iraqi transition to electoral democracy was also hardly reproducible. It is not as if Egyptians could look to the Iraqi transition as a model for how to bring about democracy in their own countries. In short, unlike Tunisia, no one was inspired by Iraq.

Last year, the Arizona legislature approved what has come to be known as the toughest immigration law in America. This week, Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R) — sponsor of Arizona’s SB-1070 immigration law — introduced a bill that is being referred to as “SB-1070 on steroids.” The most controversial provision of Pearce’s latest law, SB-1611, would require parents to provide proof of their childrens’ immigration status when enrolling them in school. Even parents who home school their children would have to provide their county school superintendent with the information. Under SB-1611, it would be a crime for an undocumented immigrant to operate a vehicle and they will have their car seized and sold and face jail time if they do. The bill also seeks to put companies that do not use the federal electronic employment verification system out of business and would require cities to evict anyone in public housing who cannot prove they are in the U.S. legally.

Pearce previously expressed interest in introducing a bill that would require undocumented immigrant parents to pay tuition in order for their children to attend public schools in Arizona. Both proposals are clearly unconstitutional and in violation of the historic Plyler vs. Doe decision in which the Supreme Court ruled against a state statute denying education funding to undocumented children in 1982.

According to Justice William Brennan, the “denial of education to some isolated group of children poses an affront to one of the goals of the Equal Protection Clause: the abolition of governmental barriers presenting unreasonable obstacles to advancement on the basis of individual merit.” In his decision, Brennan cited the Brown v. Board of Education ruling which dictated that education “is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” Brennan also noted that not doing so isn’t even in the state’s interest. “It is difficult to understand precisely what the State hopes to achieve by promoting the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime,” noted Brennan while also adding that it probably wouldn’t be enough to cause undocumented immigrants to leave.

Meanwhile, the provision of SB-1611 which would lead to vehicle confiscations is in conflict with the Fifth Amendment, which prevents the government from depriving anyone of property without due process. The whole bill itself is probably federally preempted. Aside from the legal implications of SB-1611, there are also various practical and moral ones.

Pearce has downplayed the significance of his bill, stating, “This is cleanup…All it does is do what the voters have passed in terms of no taxpayer dollars for illegals. It just ties it up.”

Nearly a week ago, Bahraini pro-democracy demonstrators held their “day of rage” as thousands of protesters flooded the nation’s capital, Manama. The demonstrators were almost immediately attacked by the Arab monarchy’s internal security forces, and were again attacked during a funeral procession for one of the slain demonstrators. Despite professions from King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa that he did not condone of the violence, the government once again moved in with tanks and riot police on Thursday, attacking sleeping demonstrators and killing several people and wounding hundreds of others.

Following the attacks, the main opposition party in the country’s largely symbolic parliament withdrew and calls for the resignation of the regime have grown. In what was perhaps a sign of the government’s weakness, Bahraini tanks and security forces departed from the center of the protests yesterday, as demonstrations continue to grow.

After Thursday’s bloody attack on demonstrators, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) — who chairs the pivotal Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs — put out a statement explaining that he has asked the State Department to review U.S. military aid to Bahrain, noting that U.S. law prohibits aid to military or security units that engage in human rights abuses:

“To a watching world, the vicious and orchestrated attacks on civilian protestors and journalists in Bahrain, Libya, Iran and elsewhere in the region are repugnant. They deserve condemnation by other governments and official actions that are appropriate to these deplorable offenses against commonly held principles.

“U.S. law prohibits aid to foreign security forces that violate human rights, and there is evidence to apply the law today in Bahrain. I have asked the State Department to consider the application of our law and I urge a prompt decision. Attacks on civilians calling for political reform and on the press are assaults on the human rights and dignity of all people.”

The law that Leahy is referring to is actually one that he himself authored. Known as the “Leahy Amendment,” the law was first enacted in 1997 and has since been used to deny military aid to Colombian military units that have been found to have abused human rights and attack civilians. If Leahy’s law were to be utilized in this case, it could lead to freezing the $20 million in military aid that Bahrain receives annually.

It is important to note that the Leahy Amendment can be a powerful tool that is already on the books to rein in abuses not only in Bahrain but in other major beneficiaries of U.S. aid — like Yemen — who are also responding to demonstrations with violence during what is being called the “Jasmine Revolution.”

Last month, a number of prominent scholars, activists, and former U.S. diplomats signed an open letter to President Obama urging him to support an upcoming U.N. Security Council “resolution condemning Israeli settlements” in the internationally recognized Palestinian territories. The letter warned that vetoing the resolution would “severely undermine US credibility and interests, placing us firmly outside of the international consensus, and further diminishing our ability to mediate this conflict.”

Yet yesterday, as the resolution appeared to be heading to passage, the Obama administration directed its delegation at the United Nations to veto it, killing any official U.N. condemnation of Israel’s colonization practices in the Palestinian territories. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said that while the veto didn’t mean that the U.S. approved of the Israeli settlements policy, that it issued the veto anyway because the resolution would risk “hardening the positions of both sides and could encourage the parties to say out of negotiations“:

The Obama administration wielded its first veto at the UN security council last night in a move to swipe down a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.

The US stood alone among the 15 members of the security council in failing to condemn the resumption of settlement building that has caused a serious rift between the Israeli government and the Palestinian authority and derailed attempts to kick-start the peace process. [...]

The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said the decision to use the veto power – open to the five permanent members of the UN, of which the US is one – “should not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity”.

She said Washington’s view was that the Israeli settlements lacked legitimacy, but added: “Unfortunately, this draft resolution risks hardening the positions of both sides and could encourage the parties to stay out of negotiations.”

The argument that the U.S. is using for vetoing the resolution does not seem to hold up against history. The United States has used its veto power 33 times before the recent veto in order to sink Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, and the peace process is as beleaguered as ever. The Obama administration previously offered $3 billion worth of “security incentives and fighter jets” to the Israelis in order to get a 90-day extension of Israel’s freezing of its settlements policy, which did little to soften the overall Israeli negotiating line.

Additionally, the recently leaked “Palestine Papers” show that Palestinian negotiators based in the West Bank regularly offered sweeping compromises and concessions to the Israelis without getting any sort of concessions in return. If anything, it appears that the decades-long U.S. policy of subsidizing Israeli transgressions without applying any sort of pressure to the country is a dismal failure.

But what may be most alarming of all about the U.S. veto is its long-lasting ramifications. At the last moment, Palestinian negotiators at the U.N. decided to go ahead and bring up the resolution despite intense pressure from Washington to pull back. After the draft resolution was vetoed, both the Fatah governing coalition in the West Bank and Gaza’s Hamas rulers have called for demonstrations against the U.S., with some high officials even calling for an end to the U.S.-led peace process, no longer believing that the country is capable of being a “fair mediator“:

Tawfik Al-Tirawi, also a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, called on the Palestinians to observe next Friday as “a day of rage” and demonstrations in the Palestinian territories to condemn the US vote against the resolution. Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary-general of the PLO’s Executive Committee, said that after the US vote, the Palestinians won’t consider the Americans a fair mediator in the peace process. [...]

Hamas said the US veto was “arbitrary.” Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman [...] called on the Palestinian Authority to cease negotiations and liaison with Israel. “Let’s start a new phase to empower the internal Palestinian unity.”

Rice appeared on Al Jazeera English to explain the U.S. rationale for the veto. The U.N. ambassador said that if the resolution had passed it “might even encourage — increase settlement activity,” bewildering the network anchor. Watch it:

In 2005, the Mexican American Legal Defense fund brought a lawsuit on behalf of 16 undocumented immigrants who claimed that an Arizona rancher — Roger Barnett — violently assaulted, detained and threatened them with death. Barnett allegedly told the immigrants in Spanish, “My dog is hungry, and he’s hungry for ass.” Barnett previously bragged about capturing 12,000 undocumented immigrants. ABC’s Nightline quoted Barnett — a self-professed border vigilante– saying that undocumented immigrants are “flooding across, invading the place.” “They’re going to bring their families, their wives, and they’re going to bring their kids. We don’t need them.”

In February 2009, a civil jury ruled in favor of the women plaintiffs. The late Chief Judge John Roll of Arizona, who was killed in last month’s tragic shooting in Arizona, received several death threats as he presided over the trial. A couple of weeks ago, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2009 ruling against Roger Barnett, forcing him to pay about $87,000 in damages to the victims.

This past Wednesday, an Arizona state House panel approved legislation that would prevent anyone who is in this country illegally from collecting punitive damages — even after winning a lawsuit. The East Valley Tribune reports:

A House panel on Wednesday approved legislation designed to benefit one man: Cochise rancher Roger Barnett. The measure would spell out that anyone who is in this country illegally cannot collect punitive damages even after winning a lawsuit.

Voters already approved a constitutional amendment doing precisely that in 2006. But that came nearly two years too late for Barnett who was sued following a 2004 incident when 16 illegal immigrants said the rancher illegally imprisoned them. HB 2191 makes that ballot measure retroactive to the beginning of 2004. If it survives the legislative process — and if it is found legal — the change could save Barnett $60,000, the amount of punitive damages four of the plaintiffs were awarded two years ago. Rep. Jim Weiers, R-Phoenix, said that’s exactly what he has in mind.

When MALDEF won its case earlier this month, MALDEF president Thomas Saenz proclaimed, “[t]his decision vindicates constitutional guarantees for all…Even in Arizona, vigilantes do not have the right to harass and victimize peaceful migrants.” Yet, if HB 2191 becomes law, Barnett’s despicable actions will go largely unpunished.

Kevin G. Rogers, President, Arizona Farm Bureau, has pointed out the approved 2006 ballot measure already says that “for a certain class of people, gross negligence against them can be excused.” Jaime Ferrant of the Border Action Network told the East Valley Tribune that HB 2191 “sets a dangerous precedent.’ Ferrant notes that Barnett has had his day in court and was sentenced. ‘This bill would establish that a certain person, or certain persons, are so important that we must make sure that they get their own set of laws to protect them,” Ferrant said.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka, last seen parroting Iranian propaganda at Israel’s Herzliya Conference, puzzles over the Obama administration’s support for a UN Security Council statement against Israeli settlements in place of the stronger UNSC anti-settlements resolution scheduled for a vote today (Ron Kampeas examines details here).

As to “what the heck the White House is thinking,” Pletka writes, “my bet is it goes something like this“:

Hmmm, trouble in the Arab world. Hmmmm, we’re being forced to support Arab and Persian citizens against their regimes. Hmmmm, how do we get back to a more “balanced approach”? Aha! The way we always do: Screw Israel. After all, the resolution the Palestinians are pushing is little more than cheap maneuvering. It certainly isn’t going to advance the peace. What the administration fails to appreciate is that this “feed the beast” move is going to have the effect that feeding the beast always has. It will be hungrier. So of course, the White House’s execrable “compromise” has only encouraged Israel’s (and our) enemies to up the ante.

Let’s look at the actual record, as detailed in a November 2010 Progress Report:

President Obama has significantly expanded trade between Israel and the U.S., and played an extremely important behind-the-scenes role in bringing about Israel’s acceptance into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a long sought-after Israeli goal. In September, Obama went before the United Nations General Assembly and challenged the international community to support Arab-Israeli peace, declaring that “Israel’s existence must not be a subject for debate.” He also assured the world that “efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakable opposition of the United States.” In comments made to The Progress Report in August, Josh Block of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee remarked, “Clearly the Obama administration remains deeply committed to the U.S.-Israel alliance.”

In terms of Israel’s security, the Wall Street Journal reported that “U.S. military aid to Israel increased markedly” in 2010, an effort that stems from policy directives the White House gave the Pentagon early in Obama’s presidency to “deepen and expand the quantity and intensity of cooperation to the fullest extent.” Speaking at the Brookings Institution in July, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro described in detail how the Obama administration is “preserving Israel’s qualitative military edge through an unprecedented increase in U.S. security assistance, stepped up security consultations, support for Israel’s new Iron Dome defensive system, and other initiatives.” President Obama raised the amount of U.S. military aid to Israel, making it the single largest expense in the 2010 foreign aid budget. He also authorized $205 million to enable Israel to complete the Iron Dome. Obama has significantly increased the level of strategic dialogue and the depth of intelligence coordination between the U.S. and Israel, particularly regarding Iran, a key Israeli security concern. According to one Israeli official, that coordination is now “even better than under President Bush.”

Since then, we’ve learned that, thanks to that intense coordination, outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan was able to report that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back several years.

As former Congressman Robert Wexler stated on a panel at Herzliya, the U.S. “has bent over backwards, during President Bush and even more so under President Obama, in attempts to secure Israeli security interests”:

When the Turkish government uninvited Israel to a joint military exercise campaign, what did Obama do? He withdrew the United States from the exercise, then what did he do? He brought the largest presence of US military personnel, they showed up to your [Israeli] ports, and we stayed for weeks, and then what did we do? We developed a coordinated anti-missile strategy with one purpose: to protect the Israeli people.

We have offered security package after security package after security package… We continue to engage on security issues and are not acknowledged for doing so.

Or maybe Pletka just has a different understanding of “screw.”

As to the settlement issue, it’s unfortunate that the Obama administration has been put into this situation, but let’s be clear on where the fault lies: It is Israel that is violating international law by colonizing territory it has militarily occupied. It is Israel that has refused to cease those activities, even when its key ally and patron, the United States, has made repeatedly clear that that refusal damages U.S. national interests.

And yes, the fault also lies with President Obama, for making the eminently reasonable and justifiable demand that Israel honor settlement freeze commitments it had already made, and then folding under domestic political pressure when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu gave him the finger. The U.S. is now in the humiliating position of possibly having to veto a UN resolution that essentially restates its own policy.

This situation cannot persist. If you haven’t noticed, the Middle East is changing, and quickly. The U.S. can either anticipate those changes, adjust its policies, and play a more productive role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and thereby helping Israel integrate more fully into the region, or it can continue to bolster Israeli illusions of an unsustainable status quo, and thereby watch its regional influence continue to erode. And those Americans who continue to run interference for Zionism’s worst impulses are going to have to decide soon whether they want to be part of the solution, or continue to be part of the problem.

Others have already criticized Niall Ferguson’s Newsweek cover story attacking President Obama’s lack of a “grand strategy” for the Middle East, but I want to specifically address Ferguson’s suggestion that Obama has “just missed — again — …the revolutionary wave of Middle Eastern democracy“:

It has surged through the region twice since he was elected: once in Iran in the summer of 2009, the second time right across North Africa, from Tunisia all the way down the Red Sea to Yemen. But the swell has been biggest in Egypt, the Middle East’s most populous country.

In each case, the president faced stark alternatives. He could try to catch the wave, Bismarck style, by lending his support to the youthful revolutionaries and trying to ride it in a direction advantageous to American interests. Or he could do nothing and let the forces of reaction prevail. In the case of Iran, he did nothing, and the thugs of the Islamic Republic ruthlessly crushed the demonstrations. This time around, in Egypt, it was worse. He did both — some days exhorting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to leave, other days drawing back and recommending an “orderly transition.”

The result has been a foreign-policy debacle. The president has alienated everybody: not only Mubarak’s cronies in the military, but also the youthful crowds in the streets of Cairo. Whoever ultimately wins, Obama loses. And the alienation doesn’t end there. America’s two closest friends in the region — Israel and Saudi Arabia — are both disgusted. The Saudis, who dread all manifestations of revolution, are appalled at Washington’s failure to resolutely prop up Mubarak. The Israelis, meanwhile, are dismayed by the administration’s apparent cluelessness.

It seems to have become a bit of conservative campfire folklore that, by failing to say just the right things at just the right times in June 2009, President Obama somehow aborted the second Iranian revolution. Understand, the next person to describe a plausible scenario in which Obama could have actually effected a different outcome than the one that occurred in June 2009 will be the first. Ferguson accuses Obama of doing “nothing” — which is untrue — but what is the “something” that President Obama, or any U.S. president, could have done to prevent “the thugs of the Islamic Republic” from “ruthlessly crushing the demonstrations”? Ferguson doesn’t say. Because, of course, he doesn’t know.

It’s worth pointing out here that actual Iranian democracy activists — including leading dissidents like Akbar Ganji and Shirin Ebadi — believe that President Obama handled those protests fairly well. (Ganji and Ebadi have also both noted that the neoconservative policies that Ferguson himself favors were politically devastating to Iran’s democrats, and that Obama’s policy of engagement helped to open political space for the Greens.) The idea that the June 2009 demonstrators could have toppled the Islamic Republic (not one of their stated goals, by the way) if only Obama had stood up taller and waved the American flag more vigorously is one that, in my experience, Iranians themselves find insultingly parochial and simple-minded.

In regard to Israeli and Saudi reactions to Egypt, I appreciate Ferguson trying to give the Israelis pass here, but, as I reported in the Nation earlier this week, many Israelis dread the outbreak of Middle East democracy just as much as the Saudis do, and are just as appalled at Washington’s failure to resolutely prop up the friendly dictator Mubarak. In Egypt, as in Iran, however, Ferguson wrongly presumes the ability of the U.S. to produce specific outcomes. It’s true that the administration tacked back and forth a bit amidst a highly uncertain and potentially explosive situation, but they clearly ended up in the right place, and the fact that even House Speaker John Boehner has credited Obama’s handling of the crisis tells you a lot. I’ve also heard that Obama’s speech following Mubarak’s departure was well received among Egyptians, though, as always, what matters is the follow-up.

As for Ferguson’s citing the vaunted “consensus among the assembled experts” at Israel’s Herzliya Conference, you can read my dispatch about that collective freak-out and judge for yourself whether these are the sort of people whose views of Obama, or of Middle East “grand strategy”, should be taken seriously. Just for fun, though, I thought I’d share one of the slides generated from a poll taken among those assembled experts (yes, it is absolutely adorable that they actually went to the trouble of doing a pie chart for such a hilariously unscientific poll) on the likelihood of military action stopping Iran’s nuclear program:

Now, to be fair, just because these conclusions are wildly out of step with the overwhelming analytical consensus on the inefficacy of military action to stop Iran’s nuclear program doesn’t mean they’re wrong, necessarily. But it does give you a sense of where these particular experts are coming from.

Late last year, I reported on a bill that was being drafted in Utah as an alternative to the Arizona copycat law being introduced by Utah State Rep. Stephen Sandstrom (R). Rather than providing costly enforcement-only solutions, the new legislation introduced by Utah state Sen. Luz Robles (D) would require undocumented immigrants in Utah to learn English, enroll in civics classes, undergo criminal-background checks, and eventually carry a state-issued work permit. Employers would be penalized for hiring undocumented immigrants without the permits under the new bill.

A new fiscal note shows that Robles’ bill would generate upwards of $11 million in revenue during the first six months after it is enacted and an additional $20 million the following years. The Salt Lake City Tribune reports:

Sen. Luz Robles will unveil the fiscal note to her immigration reform bill Wednesday to the House Republican Caucus that, according to legislative analysts, would generate $11.3 million in revenue during the first six months after it is enacted and $20 million the following year.

Those figures are only tax revenues generated from workers, Robles said, and don’t include the bill’s fees for accountability cards that must be purchased by undocumented people in Utah. The fiscal note indicates that revenues for the cards could reach as high as $18 million on top of the tax revenues. [...]

The revenues, based on registering 60,000 undocumented people in Utah, would also be enhanced by a $500 registration fee for the accountability card. The cost to the state for them — per individual — would be $173. There would be a family discount in registering for the card.

Meanwhile, Sandstrom’s bill would cost the state an estimated $11 million. That figure doesn’t take into account a 2008 study estimated that, if Utah successfully removed all of its undocumented immigrants, it would lose $2.3 billion in economic activity, $1.0 billion in gross state product, and approximately 14,219 jobs. A fiscal-impact statement on a similar Arizona copycat bill proposed in Kentucky estimated that it would cost the state a net $40 million a year in court, prison and foster-care costs. Arizona itself has already spent over a million dollars to simply defend a law that the courts have not even permitted to fully go into effect.

The fiscal benefits of Robles’ proposal are in line with other studies which have highlighted the positive economic impact of bringing undocumented immigrants out of the underground economy. A study conducted by the Center for American Progress found that comprehensive immigration reform that allows undocumented immigrants to legally work in the U.S. on a national scale could generate a cumulative $1.5 trillion increase in GDP.

Even at the state level, Robles’ legislation is no substitute for immigration reform and it’s too early to say whether it will overcome several of the federal preemption issues that often conflict with state and local immigration bills. However, her level-headed proposal has provided lawmakers with a pro-active alternative to Sandstrom’s legislation and already garnered the support of a House Republican sponsor and the backing of the conservative Sutherland Institute.

Twenty-four Senators — all Democrats, plus Joe Lieberman — have sent a letter to Secretary of State Clinton urging her to work at the March session of the United Nations Human Rights Council to establish an independent human rights monitor on Iran.

“The upcoming session of the HRC marks the sixth session since Iran’s June 2009 elections,” the letter states. “While Iran has a long history of human rights abuses, those disputed elections spawned one of the largest popular democracy movements of the 21st Century, and unleashed a subsequent campaign of brutal, systematic human rights violations by Iran’s government“:

Establishing an independent U.N. human rights monitor charged with monitoring and reporting on Iran’s human rights violations is an important effort to provide some protection for Iran’s human rights and democracy movement. You will remember that from 1984 to 2002, an independent human rights monitor on Iran was in place, and some measurable progress was achieved on human rights over that time. However, this mandate has not been renewed since 2002 and since then the situation in Iran has deteriorated.

It is important that the United States work through multilateral institutions to ensure Iran upholds its international human rights obligations. We commend the Administration’s efforts to engage the international community regarding human rights violations. However, human rights violations by the Iranian government continue unabated. The efforts of the HRC have yet to result in the extension of meaningful protections to the groups and persons being persecuted there.

Many Iranian human rights activists — including Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who I interviewed last year — have called for the establishment of a special human rights monitor. Unlike the focus on the nuclear program, for which there is substantial support among Iranians (including many the Green movement), the human rights issue has a far greater potential of putting the regime on the defensive and bolstering a key argument of the Greens.

As was discussed last year on a Center for American Progress event calling on the Obama administration to elevate human rights on its Iran policy agenda, the line between fact and fiction is disputed when it comes to Iran’s nuclear issue. It is far less so on human rights:

“It’s clear they’ve tortured and killed people since June [2009],” said [the Century Foundation's] Genieve Abdo. “There’s too much documentation” to ignore it and “Iran has always been sensitive to its human rights record,” she added.

An official U.S.-led United Nations investigation into Iran’s human rights abuses would “bring out the crimes,” Hadi Ghaemi [of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran] urged, and “put the government on the defensive.”

Pushing these issues in multilateral fora like the UN is important, as it makes it more difficult for the Iranian regime to simply dismiss them as a U.S. contrivance, which is why it was the correct move for the Obama administration to reverse the Bush administration’s policy and re-engage with the HRC. On the other hand, you’ve got Republicans like House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), who want to de-fund the UN Human Rights Commission and rely on the utterly ineffective strategy of lecturing Iran from Capitol Hill, which is also what Iran’s rulers would prefer.

Over the past year, Latinos of Mormon faith have been asking the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) to take a position on the immigration issue. While other socially conservative denominations, including the Southern Baptists and Catholics, have come out strongly supporting a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants, the Mormon church has remained notably neutral.

One advocate decided to collect the signatures of over 130 people in a letter asking Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s government to suspend visas to Mormon missionaries. The Salt Lake Tribune reports:

Even so, Raul Lopez-Vargas, a former vice president of the community group Centro Civico, walked alone into the consulate’s busy lobby in Salt Lake City and hand-delivered the letter and several other documents.

Jose Umburto Gutierrez, the official who received the papers, said he would give them to his superiors. Lopez-Vargas said he already has sent a copy directly to Calderón.

The activist said he’s doing this to pressure LDS to sign the Utah Compact — a document signed by more than 3,300 people who favor a compassionate approach toward illegal immigration. The church has endorsed, but not signed, the compact.

The article notes that LDS “is heavily invested in Mexico, with 23 missions, more than a million members and a dozen temples.” Mexico allots more than 4,800 visas for missionaries. The church’s international growth has been directly connected to its recruitment of Latinos at home and Latin Americans abroad. The LDS is often said to be the fastest growing religion in Latin America with 5.2 million members and 5,500 chapels. The number of Spanish-speaking Mormon congregations nationwide in the U.S. has grown by 90 percent in the past decade, up to more than 700.

To its credit, LDS recently released a statement which indicated that the Utah Compact “is consistent with important principles for which we stand.” Yet, as the Salt Lake Tribune notes, it has yet to formally sign on to the document. A spokesperson for LDS noted that withholding visas from LDS missionaries “would hurt Mexico more than the Utah-based church.” “The American missionaries who go to Mexico come back as that country’s greatest advocates,” he stated. While that may be true, it does not account for the fact that the church has failed to stake out a strong position in the immigration debate.

Meanwhile, while LDS has remained relatively silent on the issue, some members of the church have been more outspoken. State Rep. Stephen Sandstrom (R-UT) is the sponsor of his state’s Arizona copycat law and a Mormon himself. He blasted Lopez-Vargas for asking the Mexican government to interfere in internal matters related to Utah. Russell Pearce — the sponsor of Arizona’s controversial immigration law — is a also devout Mormon who has cited the church’s command for obedience to the law as one of his primary motivations. The Arizona Republic has reported that his association with SB-1070 has “tarnished the Mormon Church’s image among many Latinos.”

While it’s relatively unlikely that Mexico will revoke visas to Mormon missionaries, LDS is certainly facing mounting pressure from its Latino members to take a definitive stance on immigration. In the end, not doing so may hurt LDS more than it hurts Latinos.

Although it is still unclear exactly what the many motivations behind the Bush administration-led invasion of Iraq were, one of the most touted justifications for that war was that the United States attacked the sovereign country in order to overthrow a dictator and spread democracy in the Middle East.

Yet as the future of Iraq remains tumultuous and unclear, a recent wave of mostly nonviolent homegrown revolts — being dubbed the “Jasmine Revolution” in reference to a blooming flower — in Egypt and Tunisia that overthrew longtime dictators within a matter of weeks are offering an alternative model of democracy promotion.

Veteran Reuters Middle East correspondent Samia Nakhoul, who has been covering the Middle East since 1986 and reported from post-war Iraq and Egypt during the recent revolution, notes this in a special piece for Reuters today. She observes that the toppling of Saddam Hussein by a foreign army that gave way to an occupation, and later a civil war, “failed to ignite the sense of national triumph among Iraqis,” a stark contrast from the Egyptians who were “dancing in the streets after 18 days of popular protests” that overthrew Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak:

Iraq, and the Arab world, was shocked, and awed. But the fall of Saddam, at a cost of thousands of lives — and a foreboding of so much more blood to come — failed to ignite the sense of national triumph among Iraqis that has had Egyptians dancing in the streets after 18 days of popular protests. [...] Many Iraqis had little to be jubilant about. They inherited a broken country, a society that was about to fracture, causing tens of thousands more deaths. [...]

“I am Egyptian, I have toppled Hosni,” people chanted on streets, drunk on the heady scent of a free nation. So very unlike Iraq eight years ago and, surely, a better starting point for an uncertain future.

Indeed, over the weekend and continuing through today, thousands of people have taken to the streets in Yemen, Algeria, Iran, Bahrain, and other countries in the Middle East. It appears that the people of the region are proving the adage comedian and activist Dick Gregory used to tell. “When you’ve got something really good, you don’t have to force it on people,” he said. “They will steal it!”

On Friday, House Republicans put forth a “continuing resolution” (CR) to fund the government past March 4th that was filled with spending cuts. While this came as no surprise, one focus of the cuts is causing some heads to turn. House Republicans are choosing to significantly cut the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nonproliferation programs, the sole purpose of which is to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on loose nuclear weapons and materials. While Republicans have talked about the need to inflict pain in their budget, doing so in a way that increases the risk of the nuclear annihilation of an American city is perhaps taking the pledge too far.

House Republicans have proposed to cut funding for these programs by 22 percent or $647 million. Michelle Marchesano of the Partnership for Global Security warns:

The US programs charged with securing fissile materials and thwarting terrorists’ efforts to acquire them are among the victims of this year’s federal budget fights. … Without appropriated budgets commensurate to program agendas, efforts to improve global nuclear material security will stall.

The danger of a terrorist acquiring nuclear materials is very real. A softball-sized amount of highly enriched uranium can demolish an entire city. Yet in many countries, nuclear materials remain highly insecure, leaving them susceptible to theft. For years nuclear materials have floated on the black market and it is known that Al Qaeda has sought to purchase them.

But this danger is entirely preventable. It merely requires effort and a little money. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the US set up these programs to reduce the threat by locking down and eliminating insecure nuclear materials. Nonproliferation programs in the past have had significant bipartisan support and are the lasting legacy of Republican Senator Richard Lugar. The amount of funding required for these programs is also a drop in the bucket when compared to the current cost of the wars in Afghanistan and the total Pentagon budget.

Last year, then-RNC chairman Michael Steele caused a mini civil war within the Republican Party when he criticized President Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan and suggested that the United States should not be at war in that country. Leading conservatives denounced Steele’s criticism of the war, quickly silencing him.

Now, yet another Republican who criticized the war is facing the possibility of being excommunicated from the conservative movement for his dovish views. On Saturday, Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) announced that Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), one of the handful of congressional Republicans who voted against going to war in Iraq and a major opponent of the war in Afghanistan, would be kicked off its National Advisory Board over his dovish views.

YAF condemned Paul’s “delusional and disturbing alliance with the fringe Anti-War movement” and said that he was even more “out of touch with America’s needs for national security than the current feeble and appeasing administration.” The group even went as far as to say that his “refusal to support our nation’s military and national security interests border on treason“:

The conservative group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) announced Saturday that Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) would be expelled from the group’s National Advisory Board because of his “delusional and disturbing alliance with the fringe Anti-War movement.” “It is a sad day in American history when a one-time conservative-libertarian stalwart has fallen more out of touch with America’s needs for national security than the current feeble and appeasing administration,” YAF’s Senior National Director Jordan Marks said in a statement.

“Rep. Paul’s refusal to support our nation’s military and national security interests border on treason, aside from his failure to uphold his oath to the United States Constitution and defend our country and citizens against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Marks continued.

It’s curious that YAF compares Paul’s opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to treason. The latest Gallup poll on the issue finds that 61 percent of Republicans want to see a speedier withdrawal of American combat troops from the Afghanistan. Between the attacks on Steele and the purging of Paul, it appears that right-wing powerbrokers are willing to attack any conservative over their increasingly minority views on war and foreign policy.