Every war has its demons.

If Israel sees weapons moving toward its border, it acts.

Israel specifically does not want Syria to hand over weapons, chemical or conventional, to Hezbollah.

President Bashar Assad's regime is in the unique position of being targeted both by Israel and supporters of al Qaeda.

There weren't many weapons in Egypt in the 1990s. Police controls on guns were very strict back then. That is no longer the case in Egypt today.

Afghanistan does have an air force: It has two C-130s. I saw one of them. It was nice, a gift from the United States. But two planes don't even make a Caribbean charter airline, let alone an air force for a country at war.

A nuclear program has arguably worked as a deterrent for North Korea and other states - would Moammar Gadhafi have been deposed and summarily killed if Libya had had nuclear weapons? Iranians might not think so.

Faced with the crippling sanctions, Iran could simply decide it is paying too high a cost to pursue its nuclear program and could opt for negotiations and reconciliation with the United States and other members of the international community. This is clearly the preferred option of American leaders.

The dangers of an Afghan collapse are many: Afghan deaths, a loss of American prestige, a loss of NATO prestige, a moral blow to U.S. troops and veterans, a Taliban resurgence, huge setbacks for women, and greater power for Pakistan and Pakistani extremists.

To be slapped with a shoe is a dirty insult in the Muslim world.

The Israeli military believes it has destroyed all of Hamas's tunnels, or at least all the ones it knew about.

Foreign aid projects have pumped billions of dollars into the Afghan economy.

It seems nothing good comes out of Abu Ghraib.

Each time there is a conflict between Israel and Gaza, accusations fly over who started it, each side blaming the other.

The Muslim Brotherhood is much more hardline than Turkish Islamists.

If democracy brings an undemocratic group to power, is that a victory for democracy?

The Muslim Brotherhood is a fundamentalist group.

Putin believes Russia is back, and he may be right.

Rockets fired by the Taliban generally aren't guided.

In October 2008, American commandos launched a cross-border raid into Syria to capture an Islamic militant known as Abu Ghadiya. He was accused of being one of al Qaeda in Iraq's main smugglers of fighters and money between Iraq and Syria.

The Syrian border town of Qa'im was the main gateway Islamic radicals used to go to Iraq. Syria became the passageway for extremists from Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations to fight a jihad against American forces in Iraq.

ISIS is in many ways a creation of the Syrian regime.

There are clearly many Egyptian free-thinkers and intellectuals - lots of wonderful Egyptian artists and architects and scientists.

Under Islamic law, adoption is difficult.