Was this a coup? Should US assistance be cut off? Is Mohamad ElBaradei a good, democratic, liberal sort of fellow?

It is in our nation’s vital national security interest to intervene in Syria.

Hard on the heels of news that the president includes political fixer David Axelrod in his invitation-only meetings to decide which terrorists to target in drone strikes, herewith some cynical, self-serving, political reasons why this cynical, self-serving, and most political of presidents should care about what happens in Syria.

But no leader, and certainly not the commander in chief of the U.S. military, should be constrained in how he articulates America's commitment to its allies, intolerance of threats to the global order, and vision for the nation's role in the world.

What to think about the Arab Spring? Dour pundits insist that spring is a misnomer. Many are less preoccupied by the odd pairing of spring and death and more troubled by the fact that the spring seems, well, springier for Islamists than it does for secular democrats.

At a time of troubling unrest and uncertainty across the Arab world, the uprising in Syria stands as a test of US foreign policy and leadership.

Over the last decade, the Middle East has undergone a transformation as dramatic as the one that shaped the post-war independence era in the Arab world.

Dear Mitt Romney, More on that WSJ piece. You can’t beat something with nothing, and your op-ed this morning was way too light on substance and vision. Allow me to be useful.