Middle East Unrest Quotes

Libya became a rat's nest of extremism after NATO helped depose dictator Moammar Gadhafi, and it now exports weapons, jihadists, and ideology to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Benghazi happened a long time ago.

Bush II's democracy crusade and Obama's embrace of the Arab Spring have unleashed and empowered forces less receptive to America's wishes and will than the despots and dictators deposed with our approval.

Beyond Iraq, I am also profoundly worried about the continuing meltdown of Syria, which is a geopolitical Chernobyl. Until it is capped, it is going to continue to spew radioactive instability and extremist ideology over the entire region.

Gas prices in many parts of the country are nearing $4 a gallon; it could get even worse as unrest spreads throughout the oil-exporting Middle East. Yet the Obama administration once again seems to see no crisis. It has curtailed new leases for offshore oil exploration for seven years and exempted thousands of acres in the West from new drilling. It will not reconsider opening up small areas of Alaska with known large oil reserves.

It is hard to imagine two more final endings to the 'war on terror' than the popular revolts against the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and the death of bin Laden.

The most striking thing is that even before Osama bin Laden was killed, he seemed largely irrelevant to the Arab Spring.

Things were very different back in 1992. There was unrest in the Middle East, we had a gridlocked Congress, and everybody was talking about Bill Cosby.

As you know with the Arab Spring, there were no dividends.

One of the themes of 'The Longest War,' my book, which came out before the Arab spring happened, was how al-Qaida and bin Laden was losing the war of ideas in the Muslim world, not because the United States was winning them, but because al-Qaida was simply losing them.

The foremost threat to Iraq's long-term stability and the broader regional equilibrium is not the Islamic State, it is Shiite militias, many backed by - and some guided by - Iran.

The Arab Spring is over. The days of the protesters with laptops and BlackBerrys in Tahrir Square are long gone.

In 2012, President Obama was faced with a new Egyptian leader, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead of applying pressure to root him out, President Obama waived U.S. law and provided taxpayer aid to prop up the most radical elements within Egypt.

America's decline would set in motion tectonic shifts undermining the political stability of the entire Middle East.

Had you asked an expert on the Middle East what changes would be likely to tke place in 2011, almost none would have predicted the Arab Spring and none would have chosen Tunisia as the flashpoint.

The news of Mubarak stepping down came as I was sitting in my Jordanian home away from home.

[There is only one possible solution to unrest in the Middle East], namely the annihilation and destruction of the Zionist state.

I salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.

The American administration obviously has supported the dictators in the Muslim countries and the Muslims are rising, as you can see their boiling in Libya and Egypt and many other countries and they're rising up against the oppression and the Americans should stay away from trying to, if you like, put another dictator in place, and I don't think the American interest in the current time in the Middle East with their presence, rather they should withdraw their forces, they should withdraw their own personnel, this is a very insecure time for the Americans I think.

Unsettled Middle East, in these times where the people are trying to find their way towards democracy, could be interesting for many reasons - for weapons to be sold, for new geostrategic interests to be protected, and something that we are not talking about, which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The people who are lost in the whole discussion here are the Palestinians. We have demonstrations in Palestine in West Bank. Nobody is covering this. It's as if they don't exist anymore. And this is, in fact, central. And Israel is silent.

Lebanon is restless, Syria got its walking papers, Egypt is scheduling elections with more than one candidate, and even Saudi Arabia, whose rulers are perhaps more terrified of women than rulers anywhere else in the world, allowed limited municipal elections.

The fall of Arab autocrats creates more risks than opportunities for the United States. As Arab political horizons expand, the space for America to pursue its interest may well contract.

If the Arab Spring was a large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda's ideology, the death of bin Laden was an equally large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda the organization.