No matter what Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas does, his popularity is declining. In some ways, Abbas’ threshold for popularity was really never impressive to begin with, a trend that is unlikely to change in the near future. But now that a power...
Living in a country where people learn world geography through frequently fought overseas wars, Americans are accustomed to reading about places where we’ve fought wars – Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. But one formerly war-ravaged part of the...
A lot of the criticism of Rand Paul's anti-interventionist foreign policy pronouncements, as well as his high profile opposition to the NSA's spying on Americans, is couched in terms of "that was then, this is now." The argument goes something like this: with ISIS on...
The main impact of US intervention in the Middle East has been to destabilize, polarize, and radicalize the region. Especially, it has fomented a vast, multi-country, new sectarian civil war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. On each side, the most sectarian forces...
In Washington, a town in which most people, both government and non-government employees, are involved, one way or another, in public relations spin, the thing that will get you in the most trouble is telling the simple truth. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter...
A former cabinet minister, an intelligent person (nonetheless) asked me the other day: "Let's assume that your plan is realized. A Palestinian state will come into being side by side with Israel. Even some kind of federation. Then, in a few years, a violently...
If one of the very worst provisions of the Patriot Act – which the government has erroneously and illegally interpreted to gather the phone records of each and every American – expires, we'll have Senator Rand Paul to thank. And the truth is, we can't thank him...
