Obviously Pakistan and the U.S. are very different countries, but we have common geopolitical interests in preventing communist take over in Afghanistan and hence, now that Pakistan has a government that we can cooperate with, even though it is a military government, we are working together with them in order to promote our common interests. But obviously we also differ with Pakistan on a number of issues.

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.

Many more people in the world are concerned about sports than human rights.

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

U.S. foreign policy is in every area impacted by ethnic groups of one sort or another as well as economic groups and regional groups.

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

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.