Free Republic

SNIPPET: "The Obama administration announced last Thursday that it has decided to join the UN Alliance of Civilizations aimed at fostering greater cross-cultural understanding but shunned by the previous Bush administration due to fears it would adopt anti-Israeli and anti-Western stances. The Alliance of Civilizations, a joint Spanish-Turkish initiative under the auspices of the United Nations, was created in 2005. “The Group of Friends brings together those countries and international organizations supportive of the Alliance of Civilizations’ goals and objectives." SNIPPET: "The decision to join grows out of Obama’s desire to broaden US participation in international groups and improve its...

The Islamic State’s lightning offensive through Iraq and Syria last year has dominated the headlines, but the jihadist group that has won the most territory in the Arab world over the past six months is Al Qaeda. On balance, the Islamic State has lost territory during this period—though it still controls more overall than Al Qaeda—most prominently, Tikrit and the southern half of the Salah al-Din province. What we are likely to see now is a titanic war of ideology and tactics between two vicious, radical groups that together probably command more prestige among Arab peoples than the weak, often...

The United States informed Iran in advance of its intention to strike Islamic State militants in Syria and told Tehran that it would not target the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a senior Iranian official told Reuters. Asked about the assurance that Syrian government forces would not be targeted, a senior U.S. State Department official told Reuters: "We communicated our intentions, but not specific timing or targets, to the Iranians. As we've said, we won't be coordinating military action with Iran. And of course we won't be sharing intelligence with Iran either."

“The generals must be having nightmares.” So observed a Turkish analyst after his country’s parliament passed laws last week dramatically reducing the political role of the country’s armed forces. Those laws will “revolutionize the conduct of Turkish politics,” observes London’s Daily Telegraph. What might seem like bureaucratic wrangling has such potentially profound importance because the Turkish armed forces have long been Turkey’s main bastion for political moderation and close relations with the United States and Israel; how will the country fare absent this steady hand? The question is the more urgent because last week’s overhaul was carried out by the...