Epstein Secrets

Thce_r o n pos, 27 February, 2010 Article 1. Washington Post Arab democracy and the return of the Mediterranean world Robert D. Kaplan Article 2. Los Angeles Times Winds of change in the Middle East Kenneth M. Pollack Article 3. Article 4. NYT How the

s, retreating into the privacy of their homes. In the public space, 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 con

elative to the cause of political expression. But it was Rome's ability to provide a modicum of stability to parts of central Europe and the entire Mediterranean basin— and thus further the cause of personal freedoms (mind you, by the dismal standards of the era)—that is key to its achievement; and EFTA_R1_0

for nondemocratic regimes are always preferable to hard ones, even if the process takes some time. A moral argument can be made that monsters like Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya and Kim Jong-il in North Korea should be overthrown any way they can, as fast as we can, regardless of the risk of short-term chaos. But t

ic landscape are in fact proofs for why we must thwart the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah nexus. Topple the Syrian dictatorship and the access of Iran to the Mediterranean is severed, leaving the EFTA_R1_00484973 EFTA01991836 brigands of Hamas and Hezbollah scrambling for a new way. The democracies would demonstrat

ed turmoil after the successful uprising there, Syria's opposition appears scattered. Well before NATO intervened in Libya, groups hostile to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi leveraged the huge chunk of eastern Libya they held around Benghazi into the attempt to claim the whole country. A unified focus on the rebellion s