According to experts at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Mitt Romney’s proposed defense budget would boost military spending to $945 billion by 2021 — 53% more than Obama’s defense budget plan for that year — despite polling data showing the U.S. public wants cuts in Pentagon spending. This could amount to $2 trillion in additional military spending within the next decade.

Leave aside that a recent study conducted by the Center for Public Integrity showed that both Democrats and Republicans alike have advocated for cuts in military spending and that the U.S. ended its war in Iraq and is on the path to doing the same in Afghanistan. What’s most troubling about Romney’s military budget’s disconnect from Romney’s own goals for the national deficit. L.A. Times columnist Doyle McManus writes today that Romney’s boost in military spending “flies in the face of, well, arithmetic.”

Budget experts have already said that Romney’s military budget numbers don’t jibe with his plan to reduce the federal deficit. When McManus asked Romney adviser Dov S. Zakheim, the former George W. Bush Pentagon official, about the apparent lack of coherence, Zakheim deflected. McManus writes:

Zakheim said Romney was serious about the goal but hasn’t specified a date for reaching it — and as a result, no specific spending forecast is possible.

“It is a target,” he said. “The sooner we reach it, the better. And we can build up faster as the economy grows.”

Zakheim said that building up military spending to 4 percent of GDP “isn’t exactly a lot,” but McManus retorts that “needs to explain how he plans to balance the federal budget while adding trillions in new military spending” — something Zakheim, like the Romney campaign at large, dodged.

Military leaders such as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have all defended President Obama’s defense spending plan. The President’s proposal to essentially keep the Pentagon budget flat for the next 10 years has been praised and touted as sufficient by the nation’s top military experts.

But that doesn’t satisfy Romney’s platitudes. Instead, he forges ahead with a military budget that confounds experts. As McManus writes, Romney needs to proffer “more details, and soon.”

– Angela Guo

On Sunday, election monitors declared Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi the victor in Egypt’s first democratic election since Hosni Mubarak stepped down 16 months ago amidst the Arab Spring protests. At least one US congressman is not happy about the news, and once again has resorted to anti-Muslim rhetoric in the process.

Allen West (R-FL) took to his Facebook page and called the Arab Spring a “radical Islamic nightmare,” before proposing that the United States reaffirm support for “Coptic Christians and Israel” and cut off foreign aid for Egypt:

I call upon President Barack Obama to cut off American foreign aid to Egypt, denounce the results of this election, repudiate the Muslim Brotherhood, and all radical Islamist political entities.

West’s knee-jerk reaction to the Muslim Brotherhood completely discounts the historic significance of the Egyptian elections. As The New York Times notes, Morsi’s victory is the first sign of the emergence of an electoral democracy in a country accustomed to military rule. He is just Egypt’s fifth president, and the nation’s first from outside the military.

Perhaps more noteworthy, the ruling transitional military coucil officially recognized the outcome of the election, and are preparing to formally hand over power, a sign that the violence many feared may be avoided entirely and that, as the White House mentioned, the transition to democracy may stay on track despite numerous setbacks last week.

West also sought to tie President Obama to the election results, writing “what an incredible faux pas by the second coming of President Jimmy Carter, the Obama Administration.” In fact, many Republicans initially applauded President Obama’s handling of the early turmoil in Egypt, and there is no evidence to suggest that the Obama administration’s policies helped sway the elections one way or another.

The Muslim Brotherhood has long been a bête noire for West, who sees Brotherhood infiltration even at the F.B.I. His views toward American Muslims in general, likely informed by his associations with Islamophobic groups, include other similarly wild-eyed fantasies where all Muslims are responsible for the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks on America.

Former President Jimmy Carter urged the United States to regain moral leadership in its foreign policy, writing in a New York Times op-ed Monday that the U.S. “is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.”

The former Democratic president’s op-ed came on the heels of rising criticisms of the U.S. drone program after a New York Times article explored the methodology behind the attacks and other outlets questioning official civilian death tolls.

Carter criticized the U.S. drone program as “only the most recent disturbing proof” of the human rights violations committed by the U.S. Revelations that the program both kills innocent civilians and targets areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are declared war zones only in a broad reading of a post-9/11 U.S. authorization for force demonstrates the weakening of “basic rules of law and principles of justice.” Carter articulated the shift in U.S. foreign policy demonstrated by the drone program:

The [United Nations Declaration of Human Rights] has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’ [...]

These policies clearly affect American foreign policy. Top intelligence and military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior.

Carter added that, amid the Arab Sping’s upheaval, “the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Instead, he writes, “America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.”

Last week, the U.N. official dealing with state executions submitted a report to the Human Rights Council urging the U.S. to lift the veil of secrecy around the program, in order to ensure that the strikes comply with international law. Despite evidence of the Obama administration’s use of drones, the administration has only acknowledged the existence of the program once, in an April 29 speech by top counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan.

– Nina Liss-Schultz

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia reversed course on Sunday, ending a ban on women athletes representing the conservative Muslim monarchy at the Olympics. In April, Saudi Prine Nawaf, who heads the country’s Olympic committee, said women would not be travelling with the official delegation to the 2012 games in London this summer. The decision raised an outcry, including propsals to bar Saudi Arabia from the games.

Sunday’s decision by the kingdom was related in a statement from the embassy in London:

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is looking forward to full participation [in the Olympics]. The Saudi Olympic Committee will oversee participation of female competitors who qualify.

The statement about the Olympic Committee “oversee(ing) participation” of women likely refers to the initial comments by Prince Nawaf, who said that female athletes might be allowed to compete outside the purview of the official delegation.

Women who do compete — to include the most successful of Saudi Arabia’s female athletes, 18-year-old Dalma Rushdi Malhas, a competitor in Olympic equestrian — will be required to wear clothes that “preserve their dignity.” The BBC comments that the euphemism is likely to mean women will wear “sport hijab,” a loose-fitting garment that covers a woman’s hair but not face. Malhas has in the past given press conferences with her hair uncovered.

While allowing a single woman athlete into the Olympics doesn’t exactly erase rampant sexism in the powerful, oil-producing Persian Gulf country, the move does signal a step toward alleviating gender segregation in some conservative, religious MIddle Eastern countries’ participation in the Olympics.

Both Brunei and Qatar are set to send their first female competitors to the games. With the Saudi addition, Chloe at Feministing writes, “(T)here are now no countries remaining in the world who do not allow women to represent them at the Olympics. And that means that the Modern Olympic Games just got a hell of a lot more modern.”