Epstein Secrets

hat liberal Democrats were capable stewards of American foreign policy. The bad memories of the Lyndon Johnson and EFTA_R1_00441461 EFTA01964622 Jimmy Carter presidencies would at last be laid to rest; with the public still unhappy with George W. Bush's foreign policy troubles, Democrats would enjoy a lo

dent Obama now faces a moment similar to the one President Carter faced when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. The

ab Spring still an appropriate moniker for describing the series of uprisings that started with the overthrow of Tunisian president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and then spread eastward to engulf Libya, Egypt, Syria and Yemen? Or given how the region has evolved over the past couple of EFTA_R1_00441474 EF

en So Soft on Bashar Assad? Martin Peretz March 29, 2011 - I don't know where to begin. So let me start with Bashar Al Assad—whose father, Hafez, Jimmy Carter wrote he had higher regard for than any other leader in the Middle East. Barack Obama never said anything quite that hagiographic about the son. Bu

le happy. Unlike in Egypt and Tunisia, Syrians see Assad as part of the solution in their country, and not, like Hosni Mubarak and Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali, as part of the problem. He is young, closer to their age than both presidents had been to young Egyptians and Tunisians, and has not been around f

is dangerous business to predict events in the Middle East, especially in times of regional crisis. It's hard to block out flashbacks of President Jimmy Carter's 1977 New Year's Eve statement that Iran under the shah was an island of stability in a troubled region - only months before that stability was sh

there was now the cult of the rulers, the unbounded power of Saddam Hussein and Muammar el-Qaddafi and Hafez al-Assad in Syria and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. The traditional restraints on power had been swept away, and no new social contract between ruler and ruled had emerged. Fear was now

ere is no viable imitation in the Arab world. Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of America's leading strategists, was national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter. His just published book is "Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power." EFTA_R1_00234101 EFTA01845155

re demanding to be rid of him. The senior commanders of the armed forces cast him aside, and he joined his fellow despot, Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had fallen a month earlier. From Cairo, the awakening became a pan-Arab affair, catching fire in Yemen and Bahrain. As a monarchy, the latter

is dangerous business to predict events in the Middle East, especially in times of regional crisis. It's hard to block out flashbacks of President Jimmy Carter's 1977 New Year's Eve statement that Iran under the shah was an island of stability in a troubled region - only months before that stability was sh

there was now the cult of the rulers, the unbounded power of Saddam Hussein and Muammar el-Qaddafi and Hafez al-Assad in Syria and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. The traditional restraints on power had been swept away, and no new social contract between ruler and ruled had emerged. Fear was now