The UN sanctioned US/NATO Libya operation to topple Gaddafi was based on a singular premise: where there is a looming humanitarian catastrophe and the international community has the means to stop it, it should intervene to do so. Whether the US/NATO involvement exceeded that mandate is another story. But what...

Pundits and policymakers alike seem united in seeing a looming precipice as the Palestinians press a UN Security Council vote on statehood, forcing a US veto and rebuffing President Obama's pleas.

Palestinian and Israeli security forces are preparing for demonstrations which could turn violent. And, with passions aroused by the...

What is an organization deemed by the US State Department to be dedicated to terrorism -- an FTO, or Foreign Terrorist Organization -- supposed to do when it believes the charge is spurious? Clearly, the consequences of such a determination are enormous because under federal law anyone providing as much...

In October 1983 shortly after a terrorist attack against the US Marines peacekeeping mission outside of Beirut left 241 dead, a call came from a regional organization in the Caribbean -- the OECS, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States -- urgently requesting US military intervention in Grenada. Two...

The Obama administration wants to go with the tide of history, but there is no certain shore. Our allegiance is with democracy. Our allegiance is with stability. We were born of revolution and tempered by civil war. But interventions abroad have sobered our ambitions. Between these opposing pulls, we flail...

‪As revolutions against unchecked power transform the Middle East, it would be worthwhile to see how Russia and Poland come to grips with accountability for mass murders committed more than 70 years ago: In March of 1940 Stalin ordered the execution of over 22,000 Polish officers with a single bullet...

Thank goodness someone -- the Government of Spain -- has shown humanitarian concern about the plight of 3,400 Iranians in Camp Ashraf, Iraq. On January 4, 2011, an Investigative Court of the Spanish National Court summoned Iraq's Lt. Gen. Abdul-Hussein Shemmari to appear in Spain on March 8,...

Not all lies matter. Some we dismiss as not all that important. That's as true in personal life as it is in national and international affairs. Lies that are "material" profoundly affect our conduct and can severely impact the way we lead our lives. In the eyes of the law,...

Last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Washington ruled that the U.S. State Department cannot arbitrarily designate the People's Mujahadin Organization of Iran (PMOI) as a foreign terrorist organization, thus imposing criminal penalties on any American citizen who offers so much as a nickel to...

By Allan Gerson* & Amal Benaissa**

If one drives through Southern Spain, one can see miles of windmills like fresh morning poppies gracefully moving air to create electricity. It is, literally, a dance between man and nature: rhythmic, mesmerizing, and in this case productive. In a less dramatic...

The enemy of our enemy is our friend. Every schoolboy knows this. Somehow, the U.S. State Department thinks differently. It persists in keeping the MEK/PMOI (the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran), the largest Iranian anti-mullah militant organization, on the State Department's List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. It persists in...

Conventional wisdom has it - if you aggregate the views of pundits, columnists, and State Department pronouncements - that the current downward spiral in Israel-U.S. relations, which seems to be snuffing out any chance of Middle-East peace, was the inevitable result of the surprise announcement by Israel's Minister of...

It is 2010 and welcome to a new Iran. What a difference a year makes! Or does it?

Last year, on the eve of President Obama's inauguration, the key-note of Mr. Obama's foreign policy had already been set. "Engagement" was in. Bush's "saber rattling" was out. The Iranian regime...

President Obama, as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has a special responsibility: to avoid unnecessary war and at the same time, as he put it in his acceptance speech, to not shrink away from just war. Beyond that he has a responsibility for the protection of innocent lives...

This eyewitness account by a victim of Iraqi brutality against defenseless Iranian dissidents in Iraq is must reading -- on both humanitarian and national interest grounds.

By Mostafa Sanaie

Ashraf, Iraq

On October 7, as the sun came up and I sat in my...

Death no longer stalks the White House gates. The hunger strike of more than two dozen Iranian-Americans (as part of a vigil of hundreds of concerned people) came to a close Thursday with the news that 36 Iranian dissidents forcibly taken by Iraqi forces had been allowed to return --...

A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas seems imminent, although how long it will last is anyone's guess. One thing is fairly certain: even as the guns fall silent the charges and counter-charges of violations of international law will continue. Already the airwaves are full of talk that Israel's "disproportionate"...

Speaking for anyone from the grave carries risks -- especially if one portends to represent the views of the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan's "combative" representative to the United Nations. Still, Jeane Kirkpatrick was a writer, a professor, and an intellectual of the first magnitude. She would have preferred, I...

When I was a U.S. government prosecutor during the Carter Administration, the first thing we came to understand is that the rule of law requires the equal application of the law. Today, in the wake of former President Carter's unauthorized talks with Hamas leaders, the issue is whether our laws...

Libby is one of the nicest and smartest guys that I have ever worked with. But that was years ago when he was out of government. Being in an Administration that is under attack, where you feel you have been sabotaged by your own (Wilson), can do strange things to...