The United States and its Gulf allies, some of who are actively funding rebel groups in Syria, should undertake a serious joint review of Jordan’s needs and then act together to meet them.
The U.A.E. is a firm ally of the United States and deserves better treatment than it received in the Dubai Ports World fiasco in 2006.
America’s relations with complex Middle Eastern states such as Egypt are often difficult.
The intersection of religion and world politics has often been a bloody crossroads.
In Iran, there is no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no independent judiciary, no free elections. There is no freedom of religion – not even for Shiites, who are forced by Iran’s theocracy to adhere to one narrow set of official rules.
President Bush met repeatedly with human rights activists and freedom fighters from all over the world to give them encouragement and protection and to advance their cause.
I just don’t understand how Kerry or Obama or anybody else thought Assad was going to change.
The Obama administration rarely demonstrated the ability to shift gears and change policy in its first year. Even in the face of historic events such as the continuing demonstrations against Iran’s regime, it stuck devotedly to prior plans.
What Israel wants is peace with – and the acknowledgment of – all the Arab countries.
While we use American power to fight hard for democracy against extremism on both left and right, our critics seem suspicious of any assertion of United States power or influence against any government or group that claims to be on the left.
The conflict between secular Zionism and the settler movement did not appear overnight following Israel’s conquests in the 1967 war, for there was an argument that bridged the gap: security.
Times change. Cable news and the Internet alone have transformed the way outreach to the American people can be accomplished.
If a Jewish group sat down with a Christian conservative group, and there was a so-called Messianic Jew at the table, that would be the end of the meeting.
The early reviews of Dick Cheney’s memoir have not evaluated the book, but instead have used its publication as an occasion for attacks on Cheney and his record, with general assaults on George W. Bush’s administration thrown in for good measure.
The good Jew is ritually observant and resists assimilation, in some sense living apart, never fitting comfortably into American or any other society.
The way for the Palestinians to get a state is to go ahead and build it.
Both Bibi and Obama realize that they are going to have to face the problem of Iran together.
I think President Obama views Israel as a problem that needs to be solved.
I first met Kim Dae Jung when he was a Korean dissident whose life was threatened by the military regime ruling in Seoul. I was Ronald Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, and Kim was directed to me because the East Asia Bureau at the State Department had long shunned him.
The U.S. has the power to block all anti-Israel moves in the Security Council, not just some of them, and to do so without agreeing to unfair, damaging compromises.
We need to understand that an open society and free speech and press… really are the best weapons against al Qaeda and extremism.
There is no way around the contradictions and dangers inherent in Israel’s decision to free over 1,000 prisoners in order to liberate Gilad Shalit.
While Argentina, Brazil, and Chile – what in textbooks used to be called the ABC countries – seem settled into democratic politics and free market economics, the Andean countries are in disarray.
For the entire first term, Obama and his people blamed Bush for everything – which is another way of saying they felt Bush and the Bush years were the inescapable reference point for everything they were themselves doing.
Cheney’s memoir is not about 9/11, or solely about Bush’s administration, but about his entire life and political career.
The debate over same sex ‘marriage’ has engaged the heartfelt feelings and convictions of millions of Americans.
The United States treated Gaddafi as an enemy due to his support for terrorism against us, until a rapprochement of sorts began under Pres. George W. Bush at the very end of 2003.
If you said to people you can cast a secret ballot on whether to turn back the clock and have Morsi in power again, I don’t think very many people in Washington would turn back that clock.
The Erdogan government’s first major step outside of the U.S. alliance was during the Bush Administration, when it wouldn’t let Washington use Turkey as a launching ground for U.S. troops entering Iraq in 2003.
In Arab capitals, the failure of the United States to stop Iran’s nuclear program is understood as American weakness in the struggle for dominance in the Middle East, making additional cooperation from Arab leaders on Israeli-Palestinian issues even less likely.
It’s not good for Israel to govern millions of Palestinians.
Evangelicals too often fall short in their actual teachings about Judaism.
China has concluded that trade trumps all.
In the spring of 2007, Israeli intelligence brought to Washington proof that the Assad regime in Syria was building a nuclear reactor along the Euphrates – with North Korean help. This reactor was a copy of the Yongbyon reactor the North Koreans had built, and was part of a Syrian nuclear weapons program.
The accession to power in Pyongyang of Kim Jong Un, son of Kim Jong Il and grandson of Kim Il Sung, is a unique achievement in world politics.
From its earliest days in the nineteenth century, and until the Holocaust, the Orthodox rabbinate in eastern Europe was not enthusiastic about the Zionist movement, which at the time was led by irreligious Jews.
Sari Nusseibeh is a man without a country.
Nineteen-seventy-nine had been a year of American setbacks around the globe. Before the year began, Cuban troops were already roaming Angola, and a pro-Communist regime ruled Ethiopia.
Moammar Gaddafi, who has called himself the ‘Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,’ should go down in history with the Emperor Bokassa and Idi Amin as a grotesque reminder of why people have the right to change their government.
A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy.
Fatah is a political party and movement, whose chairman is Mahmoud Abbas.
We use American influence with Israel not to promote economic growth in the West Bank, but to try and impede Jewish – never Arab – construction in the capital city.
The Fayyad cabinet may well be the best the Palestinians ever get. But whatever its good qualities, there is no democracy.
Refusing to lift sanctions and adopting tougher rhetoric toward Iran would not be partisan issues. Plenty of Democrats think that those actions are both good politics and good policy.
Can Israelis be wistful? It is not the characteristic we usually associate with them; more typically they are said to be tough, sweet, angry, thoughtful, demanding – not wistful.
Obviously, every dictator pays a great deal of attention to who is running the army. There’s always a base right outside the capitol to protect the head of government.
Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.
Israel’s flexibility is dependent on its sense of security.
When the policy is controversial, you have to go out and defend it.
Terrorism exploded after the Camp David talks broke down in 2000 because the Palestinians’ leader at the time, Yasser Arafat, supported it.
Huge numbers of embassy cables are labeled ‘unclassified’ or ‘limited official use’ and deal with mundane matters.
There’s been an Israeli position, which is ‘We love Mubarak,’ that permeates their whole society, the political class. That certainly differs from many of us in the pro-Israel camp in the United States.
I would have thought that if you’re going to try to punish the Syrians and prevent them from using chemical weapons again, the thing to do is a one-time strike. Maybe a cruise missile strike at one or two of their air bases just so they know what they’re going to gain from using chemical weapons on the battlefield.
Now in its third year in office, the Obama Administration has never championed the cause of human rights. Its slow reaction in June 2009 to the stealing of the election in Iran and the birth of the ‘Green Movement’ there, and its delay in backing the rebellions in Egypt, Libya, and Syria, are evidence of this problem.
Gadhafi has established no national institutions, not even allowing a fake parliament of the Mubarak or Ben Ali variety that could perhaps be turned into something real.
Opponents of U.S. sanctions have made ‘unilateral sanctions’ their special target. They argue that sanctions observed by many nations would be much more effective. True enough. Far better for trade with an outlaw regime to be restricted by many nations than by just one.
The threat that Syria might transfer more advanced weapons to Hezbollah has existed for a long time.
