Libya

Webb’s Parting Shots

To get elected to the Senate, you have to meet certain requirements. You have to be at least 30 years old, a U.S. citizen for nine years, and a resident of the state you represent. Based on Jim Webb’s recent performance, I would like to propose a fourth requirement: you have to be a novelist. If we had 100 novelists in the Senate, the body might finally be able, like Webb, to distinguish fact from fiction.

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Winners and Losers in a New Middle East

Winners and Losers in a New Middle East

The Middle East faces a moment of truth as country after country rises up against its authoritarian leaders. No government is secure against the people-powered protest movements sweeping the region. These dramatic events will likely be the greatest U.S. foreign policy challenge over the next decade. The regional security framework — with new roles for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Israel, and the likely Palestinian state (or states) — is evolving, and Washington must reexamine how it defends its regional interests in a new way.

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Postcard from…Libya

Postcard from…Libya

Sixty years after the conclusion of World War II in North Africa, destroyed European weaponry once again litters Libya’s coastal roads as the civil conflict there enters its second month. But Europeans are not fighting on the ground in the former Italian colony. Rather, their arms are. In Libyan hands, European-made arms are part of a proxy battle that demonstrates the unintended consequences of the international arms trade.

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