When I first arrived in Baghdad in January 2003, I thought I would soon rent a house and envisioned myself swimming in the Tigris to cool off after reporting in the city the caliphs called Madinit al-Salam, the City of Peace. A year later, I realized I wouldn't be taking any midnight dips - Madinat al-Salam no more.
Many in the U.S. military believe ISIS needs to be immediately, and repeatedly, smashed by American drones and warplanes.
Hezbollah and the government are only two of 18 political factions in Lebanon, most of them armed. There are militant Christian groups, Palestinian radicals, al-Qaida, Druze militias and even armed bands of Marxists still operating in Lebanon.
Foreign aid projects have pumped billions of dollars into the Afghan economy.
Israel is becoming a fortress. Fences along the borders with Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria.
Everyone knows what can happen to soldiers who are in front line units.
Each time there is a conflict between Israel and Gaza, accusations fly over who started it, each side blaming the other.
The people of Gaza are trapped. Israel has sealed the border, and they have no way to leave the Gaza Strip to do business.
Afghanistan and Iraq were lumped together in what was called a 'global war on terrorism.'
It's probably time to end the global war on terrorism.
Mali exists mostly to itself. Few people go there. Few Malians leave. Most of Mali's 13 million people live, and seem to live quite happily, off the rice, corn and millet they grow and the long-horn cattle and goats they keep.
Many senior government officials, CIA, FBI, counter terrorism officials - when they look back at the decade, they effectively conclude that the United States overreacted after 9/11.
The United States encouraged Iraqis to rise up after Saddam Hussein's army was driven out of Kuwait. Washington assumed Saddam was weak after losing the 1991 Gulf War. Iraqis rose up, but Saddam's troops killed thousands - Iraqis say tens of thousands - in a counter-offensive.
In 2009, Hamas was relatively new to power. It had won elections just three years earlier and was flexing its newfound strength via a war with its old enemy, Israel, which it officially wants destroyed.
The Israeli military believes it has destroyed all of Hamas's tunnels, or at least all the ones it knew about.
Hamas is a Palestinian political party with an aggressive militant wing.
There was an insurgency under President Hosni Mubarak in the 1990s. Egyptian police and soldiers fought weekly battles with Islamists in the sugarcane fields and thick reeds along the Nile in rural southern villages like Minya, Sohag, Enna and Assiout.
The U.S. invaded the wrong country, destroying an odious government that was not responsible for 9/11. I don't know how you recover from invading the wrong country, no matter how you spin it.
For eight years, you had the Bush administration with a very interventionist policy, driving into world affairs, driving primarily into the Islamic world, army first or fist first.
Afghanistan was always a backwater in the Islamic world.
