It's a very bad thing when people exterminate other people, and people persecute minorities.

That sense of what happened in Europe in World War II has shaped a lot of my views.

After a regime is removed, however, it is dangerous to leave a security vacuum.

Islamic State is mainly a direct result of the failure in Syria. That's where IS has grown. That's where IS spread from.

The absence of Saddam is a huge weight off the Arab world.

The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason.

I told my father I had to try political science for a year. He thought I was throwing my life away.