From the Shores of Tripoli to the Walls of Babylon, America continues to fight rogue states in league with terrorists.

The Shores of Tripoli
Robert McHenry, TCS Original Article

A significant anniversary has just passed us by, and if there was any mention of it in the press, I missed it. It's probably too late to hang up bunting and arrange for a parade to mark an event that happened 200 years ago last month, but surely it is always timely to relearn a bit of instructive history. And, notwithstanding Santayana's too-often repeated mot about forgetfulness and history repeating, it is sometimes possible to see in such repetition not error or futility but constancy.

Nothing has changed. Abbas is a weak leader on all fronts.

History Holds Its Breath
Mortimer B. Zuckerman, US News & World Report Original Article

It's a picnic on a volcano. Mount Etna has been erupting off and on for over 2 million years, and that's just about how it feels in the Middle East with the Arab-Israeli confrontation. Beneath the current calm, the lava boils, and a half-attentive world is deluded into thinking peace is finally on the way, following the death of the destructive Yasser Arafat and the election of the "constructive" Abu Mazen.