I understand politically that uprisings take place as a combination of spontaneity and preparation, not that preparation is more important than spontaneity.

Mr. Assad is not going to be able to feel like there is a moderate opposition that actually threatens him. Currently, the Assad government looks out at the landscape, sees the rise of ISIS, sees that much of the rebel force has become largely Islamist, and then turns to the West and says, well, you know, they look toward the West and say, well, look, what you have is a terrorist group that's fighting against us. So in this context, I think, to talk about moderate opposition being created to put pressure on Damascus is rather illusionary.

The Islamic State is able to raise finances through taxation, through theft of banks, and certainly through oil sales from the Omar oilfields in eastern Syria. So right now the question of funding isn't of the essence.

Mr. Obama needs to make a phone call to Ankara and have a serious conversation about why the current government in Turkey isn't going to seal its border, why it doesn't take a stronger position against the Islamic State.

However you define territorial ambitions, it need not be a country that's right next to the U.S. for it to exercise its extraterritorial or territorial ambitions.

All evidence suggests that Turkey has allowed ISIS fighters, when they've been injured, to return into Turkey and to get treated in Turkey's hospitals.

Interestingly, what the bourgeois women's groups in India wanted to do in the nationalist period is to have the peasant women essentially follow them... They would be the leaders and the peasant women would be the masses.