"...[E]veryone will be better off in the interim if the United States can help keep Syrian refugees from destabilizing the region. That means steering our humanitarian assistance towards temporary relief, providing public safety and emergency resources to the host nations, and enforcing promises made by Arab neighbors and the international community to provide financial support for the refugees."

"The Benghazi attacks, she said, were likely the beginning of another wave of Al Qaeda-inspired violence: smaller but still deadly. The end of totalitarian governments will lead to more disruption, ideological fervor, and black-market weapons trading. It is the undeniable consequence of regime change, whether it comes from an invasion (Iraq), a limited intervention (Libya), a nudge (Egypt), or a hands-off policy (Syria) on America's part."

"...[M]oving arms to just about anyone who was willing to bring down Moammar Khadafy would have satisfied three of Qatar's goals at once: its political desire for relevancy in making a future Libyan government beholden to it; its strategic desire to minimize the influence of the Shi'ite government in Iran, its giant neighbor; and its practical desire to make a lot of money. As if to make the last point clear, Qatar is now asking the new Libyan government to pay it back for all those guns."

"The case study we do not have is whether a no-fly zone will aid rebel leaders in deposing a tyrannical leader in a predominantly ground combat civil war where the United States has a strong preference for who should lose, but almost no idea who the winners are. This is new territory."

The Lebanon we see is the Lebanon we remember, the one we don't visit.