If democracy brings an undemocratic group to power, is that a victory for democracy?
The Muslim Brotherhood is much more hardline than Turkish Islamists.
Each time there is a conflict between Israel and Gaza, accusations fly over who started it, each side blaming the other.
It seems nothing good comes out of Abu Ghraib.
In popular Egyptian and regional culture, women are seen as weak, easy victims to temptation in the same way Eve couldn't resist that shiny apple in the Garden of Eden.
Foreign aid projects have pumped billions of dollars into the Afghan economy.
For many foreign fighters, the jihad in Iraq and Syria is a commuter war.
The Israeli military believes it has destroyed all of Hamas's tunnels, or at least all the ones it knew about.
To be slapped with a shoe is a dirty insult in the Muslim world.
The dangers of an Afghan collapse are many: Afghan deaths, a loss of American prestige, a loss of NATO prestige, a moral blow to U.S. troops and veterans, a Taliban resurgence, huge setbacks for women, and greater power for Pakistan and Pakistani extremists.
Faced with the crippling sanctions, Iran could simply decide it is paying too high a cost to pursue its nuclear program and could opt for negotiations and reconciliation with the United States and other members of the international community. This is clearly the preferred option of American leaders.
A nuclear program has arguably worked as a deterrent for North Korea and other states - would Moammar Gadhafi have been deposed and summarily killed if Libya had had nuclear weapons? Iranians might not think so.
Afghanistan does have an air force: It has two C-130s. I saw one of them. It was nice, a gift from the United States. But two planes don't even make a Caribbean charter airline, let alone an air force for a country at war.
There weren't many weapons in Egypt in the 1990s. Police controls on guns were very strict back then. That is no longer the case in Egypt today.
President Bashar Assad's regime is in the unique position of being targeted both by Israel and supporters of al Qaeda.
Israel specifically does not want Syria to hand over weapons, chemical or conventional, to Hezbollah.
If Israel sees weapons moving toward its border, it acts.
Every war has its demons.
'Shabiha' is a difficult word to translate into English. It comes from the word Syrians used to describe the luxury Mercedes favored by the Assad family's operatives that the enforcers of the regime used to move money, smuggle weapons and intimidate opponents.
Every war has revolutionary justice.
Syrians need to prepare for the aftermath if the Assad regime falls. Atrocities that could be considered war crimes have been committed in this country, and Syrians should rightly demand that the perpetrators be held accountable.
Initially, before the modern state of Iraq was created, there were three separate provinces here: a Shiite in the south, a largely Sunni one in the middle, and a Kurdish one in the north.
Egypt has a presidential system. The president runs the state. Who the president is matters profoundly.
The Muslim Brotherhood, or 'the Brotherhood' for short, is an Islamic group founded in Egypt in 1928. It has been pursuing a secret campaign to take over the government since its creation.
Egypt is the most populous Arab nation, the seat of Sunni Islamic doctrine, and has tremendous political, religious and social influence on the rest of the region. For better or worse, it will lead the rest of the Middle East by example. So goes Egypt, so goes the region.
