Four years is a long time in politics.

Bahai Iranians are barred from holding government jobs, their children are excluded from the nation's university system, their marriages are not recognized and their cemeteries and holy places have been desecrated. It is government policy to incite hatred of Bahais in the official media.

The United States should encourage Israel to take further steps to improve the Palestinian economy.

Reagan did not wait out the Soviets; he beat them.

The Middle East that Obama inherited in 2009 was largely at peace, for the surge in Iraq had beaten down the al Qaeda-linked groups. U.S. relations with traditional allies in the Gulf, Jordan, Israel and Egypt were very good. Iran was contained, its Revolutionary Guard forces at home.

Mass killing has very clearly not been eliminated, nor has the 'international community' developed a response that will avert it or bring it to a quick end.

Opponents of U.S. sanctions have made 'unilateral sanctions' their special target. They argue that sanctions observed by many nations would be much more effective. True enough. Far better for trade with an outlaw regime to be restricted by many nations than by just one.

The notion that public service requires men and women of good character now seems quaint.

In public, an admission of technological inadequacy would be too embarrassing.

The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country.

While Argentina, Brazil, and Chile - what in textbooks used to be called the ABC countries - seem settled into democratic politics and free market economics, the Andean countries are in disarray.

If the president of the United States says that attacks on civilians, starvation, and denial of religious freedom in Sudan are important international issues, they become so.

The United States should help strengthen nongovernmental humanitarian agencies working in Sudan so that they can handle an increased flow of aid.

An effective U.S. policy toward Sudan - one capable of changing the situation in the south and affecting the lives of its people - will require top-level attention and a great deal of energy. It should have three elements: aid, diplomacy, and financial disclosure.

The United States already has in place comprehensive trade sanctions against Sudan, imposed because of the regime's support for terrorism. While we maintain diplomatic relations, we do not staff our embassy there.

A Palestinian state will never be created by terror.

I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders - leaders not compromised by terror.

Arab states continue to send the Palestinians gifts of extravagant rhetoric and countless Arab League resolutions - but not much cash.

Honduras was the original 'banana republic,' and its poverty remains extreme.

The Obama administration has been trying out a new policy toward Syria since the day it came to office. The Bush cold shoulder was viewed as a primitive reaction, now to be replaced by sophisticated diplomacy. Outreach would substitute for isolation.

Israel will not and should not leave until it is clear that the West Bank can be policed by Palestinians and that the region will not be a source of terrorism against Israel, as Gaza and South Lebanon became when Israel left there.

The way for the Palestinians to get a state is to go ahead and build it.

The Obama administration rarely demonstrated the ability to shift gears and change policy in its first year. Even in the face of historic events such as the continuing demonstrations against Iran's regime, it stuck devotedly to prior plans.

In Arab capitals, the failure of the United States to stop Iran's nuclear program is understood as American weakness in the struggle for dominance in the Middle East, making additional cooperation from Arab leaders on Israeli-Palestinian issues even less likely.