What are the prospects for an Arab state serving a leading role comparable to the role that other states place in other regions? There is no obvious candidate. Saudi Arabia has the money but a relatively small population. Iraq was a great potential leader, as a sizable country with great oil resources and a highly educated population, but it went off in the wrong direction.

If one of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence came back today, he would not be surprised about what Americans were saying and believing and articulating in their public statements. It would all sound rather familiar.

Turkey has its own interests and historically, Turkey conquered most of the Arab world, and the Arabs had to fight wars of liberation to free themselves from the Turks. That's in the past and that doesn't necessarily shape what is going on but it's there and it's there in people's memories.

Except under rare circumstances, I don't write responses to criticism.

The United States has been an immigrant country. The Hispanics who come here are largely from Mexico and South America. They are Catholics, but that is an American religion. One-third of our population is Catholic so that does not have the same impact as Muslims coming into Europe.

People everywhere talk about Islam and the West. Presumably that has some relationship to reality, that these are entities that have some meaning and they do. Of course the core ofthat reality is differences in religion.

Partial truths or half-truths are often more insidious than total falsehoods.