Middle East & North Africa

"What happens when, after another dozen major attacks, the chain of their barbarism outpaces the chain of our human solidarity? When is the permissible moment to start asking if we can muster as much wisdom and realism to fight terror as we do to harness emotions of solidarity? The recent increasing pace and widening geographic scope of terror suggest we are dealing with a qualitatively new kinds of terrorists — but the policy responses of governments and the emotional responses of entire societies suggest we have no idea how to respond to quell this monster."

"The more the Global War On Terror continues, the greater seems to be the expansion and impact of the very terror groups it seeks to defeat, with ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra being the most recent examples. During the last few months that I have spent in the United States, I have wondered, with growing perplexity, why there is so little discussion here of why the GWOT seems only to have sparked the continued birth and expansion of international militant and terror groups across the Arab-African-Asian region."

"It is fitting that Egyptian armed forces commander Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Sisi has decided to assume the presidency of his country, because two of the three main problems that Egypt faces are a consequence of his own decisions during the past year. These are the massive schism in society between the Muslim Brotherhood that he banned and the rest of the country, and the continuing tradition of military control over civilian politics and national governance (the third problem is the chronic issue of economic growth that can create enough jobs for the two million + Egyptians born every year)."