If we had reason to be confident that bombing some of Assad’s assets would save more Syrians than it would kill, armed intervention might be warranted. We don't.
Many Syrian Christians who wouldn’t deny Assad’s record of repressing political opponents would rather put up with that than live under the rule of Islamists.
The issues that gnaw at George Scialabba relate primarily to political economy. For an avowed man of the left, “the last three decades have been bitter medicine.”
What is the source of the division between Sunnis and Shi‘ites, and how prevalent is this bifurcation in the Islamic world, a community of more than 1.6 billion?
Nuclear weapons have no real utility to North Korea other than as deterrence of attack or invasion. The threat of their development is a propaganda asset.
You wonder if the president might find himself singing a variant on Kermit the Frog's anthem about the burdens of being green: It's not easy being Barack Obama.
