Earlier this week, a group of more than 100 experts and scholars released an open letter to President Obama, urging him to make support for democracy in the Middle East a top priority.

A diverse spectrum of names signed on and lent their support to the initiative, including...

On Monday, President Obama, for his first major interview, spoke to the second largest Arabic satellite channel in the world. His comments to Hisham Melhem were impressive for both their honesty and restraint. But did this important gesture to the Muslim world come too soon? Heather Hurlburt, at...

On January 26, President Obama addressed the Arab and Muslim world directly, in an interview with Hisham Melhem on Al-Arabiya. Needless to say, it was great. On January 12, there was a panel discussion in DC organized by the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) - which...

Thomas Friedman writes that "America's goal has to be a settlement in Gaza that eliminates the threat of Hamas rockets and opens Gaza economically to the world, under credible international supervision." Easier said than done. A difficult question for the US, Israel, and the international community is "what to...

Beyond the headlines, and regardless of who's to blame for what, there's the question of why Hamas chose to continue and intensify its rocket attacks against Israel in recent weeks. It would seem that Hamas's actions were both stupid and irrational from a strategic standpoint. "What the hell were...

In the realm of foreign policy, "Ideology" is getting a bad name. "Pragmatism" is, apparently, all the rage. Problem is we aren't being careful with our terms. (For a primer on the debate, see Chris Hayes' meditation on the subject, as well as this very interesting and provocative