Syria

If there were ever a perfect example of the Bush administration's utterly bankrupt, and provably impotent, foreign policy, it would have to be the State Department's reaction to events in Beirut over the last few days. The laughably weak U.S.-backed Lebanese government, in what can only be described as...

The war of words between Lebanon's political leaders has finally turned into battles on the streets of Beirut. Today, gun battles have erupted in Beirut following a speech by Hezbollah's Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, in which he labeled the Lebanese government's decision to dismantle a Hezbollah operated communication network a...

Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary of independence this week, and this surely is a milestone of biblical proportions given the relentless challenges Israel has faced since its birth. The celebration also represents an ideal opportunity for Israel to reward itself with a gift that may, just may, keep on giving.

A week ago, I wrote about Jimmy Carter's meeting with representatives of Hamas. Carter had a simple idea: you only make peace with your enemies and you can only make peace when you talk to your enemies. Today, Carter explains his position more fully in public.

He...

Yesterday could not have presented a more stunning portrayal of the self-marginalization of America as an actor in Israeli-Arab conflict resolution under the Bush administration.

On the Israeli-Palestinian front the president was hosting PLO Chair Mahmoud Abbas at the White House while the real action was taking place in...

"The Bush administration charged Thursday that a secret Syrian nuclear reactor was within weeks or months of completion before Israel bombed it on Sept. 6th, and demanded that North Korea and Syria publicly acknowledge their collusion on a...

This week, Syria made news headlines not once...but twice. One headline implicated it in enriching uranium and involved the CIA confirming to Congress that the target of a mysterious Israeli air raid in northern Syria on Sept. 6, 2007 was a reactor built with North Korean help.

The second...

This may or may not be related to why the Wall Street Journal's top editor, Marcus Brauchli, quit yesterday, but it sure looks to be connected. The "this" that I am referring to is the propaganda piece published in the WSJ - now owned by propaganda magnate, R. Murdoch...

Even after all of this time and President Bush's own abandonment of the WMD theme, Vice President Richard Cheney is still convinced that there are hidden WMDs in the Middle East...

For many American Jews, choosing who to support in a presidential election comes down to a simple litmus test proposition: Which candidate will be better for Israel? Among an increasingly vocal group of Jews, the answer to that question has meant voting for a Republican. It is true that the...

Cairo--By coincidence I was in Cairo today when former President Jimmy Carter arrived here to meet with a delegation from Hamas over the vociferous objections of Israel and the United States. I had served as Deputy Senior Advisor for Middle East Affairs in Carter's White House, and was on the...

Shunned by Israeli political leaders, former US president Jimmy Carter met with a Hamas representative in the West Bank and says he will go ahead with plans to meet with the leader of Hamas and the Syrian President in Damascus to promote peace in the Middle East.

More...

When General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker testified before a Senate Committee this week, they pointed to "security improvements" and a "drop in violence" in Iraq over the last year, but there was one issue never mentioned: that's the issue of Iraqi refugees.

One of the very coolest and most informative blogs I check in on a daily basis is ArmsControlWonk.com published by my New America Foundation colleague Jeffrey Lewis.

Both of us were asked by the Better World Campaign to offer comments for its "On Day One" initiative. He...

In 2006, as Iraq descended into new depths of civil conflict, 350 Palestinian refugees were driven out of Baghdad by targeted violence. They arrived in the desert no-man's-land between the Iraqi and the Syrian border crossings at Al-Tanf. Due to their concerns over the arrival of an estimated 1.6 million...

The collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century, leaving the United States as the sole superpower, led to the century being dubbed, "The American Century." The world looked forward to enlightened leadership, visionary policies, and a multilateral approach in the conduct...