Autor: Reuel Marc Gerecht

I've now read your book twice--it's a smooth, clean read. Even though Samantha Power is usually credited as the principle drafter behind Senator Barack Obama's defining counterterrorist speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in August, Winning the Right War seems the blueprint for this oration (if we subtract the bit about bombing Al Qaeda encampments in Pakistan, which doesn't work well with your more concerned and sympathetic treatment of General Pervez Musharraf).

American foreign policy in the Middle East can produce severe cognitive dissonance. Take Palestine and Iran. The White House's evolving policies toward the Palestinians and the clerical regime in Tehran show how easy it is for history to take a back seat to process, for reality to give way to illusions, and for hope in diplomacy to obscure the need to make serious decisions.

A good literary scholar or classicist in the United States perhaps doesn't quite have the same social cachet as would a similarly accomplished scholar at Oxford or the Sorbonne. But when scholars do make it in the United States--and there certainly seem to be vastly more European scholars hoping to make it in America than Americans trying to snag a sinecure in Europe--there is simply no comparison in the eminence, influence, and renown that they can achieve.

What would be the consequences of an American withdrawal from Iraq? Trying to wrap one's mind around the ramifications of a failed Iraq--of an enormous, quite possibly genocidal, Sunni-Shiite clash exploding around American convoys fleeing south--is daunting.

Since the suburban riots last August, the perception that France is in decline has become de rigueur in French, European, and American circles. Economically, culturally, educationally, militarily, diplomatically, and even gastronomically, France seems to have significantly diminished. But French foreign policy--which has become noticeably less anti-American since the Iraq war and tougher toward Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons--suggests that France may already be recovering from its déclinisme.

It is difficult to think what the United States might offer at the negotiating table that would cause Iraq's neighbors to stop seeing it in their interest to foment trouble there. Nevertheless, the idea of a regional conference has gained currency in Washington, notably inside the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group.

Is jihadism growing exponentially because of Iraq? The liberal parts of the press, Democratic politicians, and numerous counterterrorist experts say as much.

Although many Muslims have apparently found Pope Benedict XVI's recent oration at the University of Regensburg deeply offensive, it is a welcome change from the pabulum that passes for 'interfaith' dialogue. Since 9/11, his lecture is one of the few by a major Western figure to highlight the spiritual and cultural troubles that beset the Muslim world.

Pocos intelectuales árabes sunníes han respondido con alegría a la noticia de la muerte de Zarqawi. Muchos parecen incómodos con las tácticas que utilizaba Zarqawi. Muchos menos parecen estar incómodos con el objetivo general de Zarqawi -destruir a los americanos, a los chi'íes y a los kurdos. En las próximas semanas, veremos si se desarrolla un debate serio y crítico del bárbaro tratamiento de Zarqawi a los chi'íes, y quién se abstiene de llamarle mártir.

Since arriving in the United States in 1974, the British historian of the Middle East Bernard Lewis has become one of America's -and thus the world's- most famous academics.