FOUAD AJAMI

A foreign power that stands sentry in the world cannot spare its local allies the retribution of those who brand them as “collaborators” and betrayers of the faith.

The things and ways the West took to the rest have become the ways of the world.

Dictators are the last to know.

America has wearied of Middle East War.

We have tended to be comfortable with authoritarian regimes.

You can reach agreements with countries; you cannot reach agreements with gangs.

President Maliki: The appetite has grown with the eating. He has become a real dictator.

Commerce has not delivered us out of history’s passions, the World Wide Web has not cast aside blood and kin and faith.

The relations between Islam and Christianity, … have often been stormy. Each has been the other’s other….

The driving motivation of a new American endeavor in Iraq and in neighboring Arab lands should be modernizing the Arab world.

Where nationalism is the main issue, the demand for democracy always takes second place.

A foreign power that stands sentry in the world cannot spare its local allies the retribution of those who brand them as “collaborators” and betrayers of the faith.

Dictators are the last to know.

If Muslims truly believe that their long winter of decline is the fault of the United States, no campaign of public diplomacy shall deliver them from that incoherence.

The United States need not worry about hearts and minds in foreign lands.

The fundamentalist call has resonance because it invited men to participate… in contrast to a political culture that reduces citizens to spectators and asked them to leave things to their rulers.

Commerce has not delivered us out of history’s passions, the World Wide Web has not cast aside blood and kin and faith.

The relations between Islam and Christianity, … have often been stormy. Each has been the other’s other….

The things and ways the West took to the rest have become the ways of the world.

You can reach agreements with countries; you cannot reach agreements with gangs.

America has wearied of Middle East War.

Any major Lebanese politician who opposes Syria is in danger.

We have tended to be comfortable with authoritarian regimes.

The dream of an Egypt without beards and veils is illusory.

President Maliki: The appetite has grown with the eating. He has become a real dictator.

The driving motivation of a new American endeavor in Iraq and in neighboring Arab lands should be modernizing the Arab world.

The end of despots is always odd?exhilarating to those who suffered their tyrannies, and to those who hold despotism in contempt, and anti-climatic at the same time, the discovery that these tyrants were petty, frightened men after all.

These others -- the overwhelming majority of Iraq's people -- have repeatedly given every indication of valuing their newfound freedom: voting in two elections at the risk of their lives, preparing for a third, writing and ratifying a constitution granting more freedoms than exist in any country in the entire Arab Middle East. The secret is out, There is something decent unfolding in Iraq. It's unfolding in the shadow of a terrible insurgency, but a society is finding its way to constitutional politics.