America has exercised its power to insist on elections in Palestine, which Hamas did win. Once they won, we then engaged in a policy not only of ostracism, but by financial boycott, in effect of undermining it, and creating more tension and radicalism and poverty in Gaza, which was susceptible to exploitation by Hamas.

To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.

I have no patience for those in the American Jewish community who just go around slandering people as anti-Semites without realizing that what they're doing is really trivializing anti-Semitism.

Because you can't intervene everywhere, you don't conclude you can't intervene anywhere.

For people of different faiths to coexist, it's going to take maturity, wisdom, and patience. All of which come, eventually, with tolerance. And it's a process of time.

The legitimacy of the leadership depends on what that country thinks of its leaders.

America is the only superpower. But our leadership is being tested in the Middle East, and some of the things that we have done in the Middle East are contributing to a potential explosion region-wide. And if that explosion gets out of hand, we may end up being bogged down for many years to come in a conflict that will be profoundly damaging to our capacity to exercise our power, to address the problems implicit in this global awakening, and we may face a world in which much of the world turns away from us, seeks its own equilibrium, but probably slides into a growing chaos.