The staggering economic turmoil of recent months has left people around the world scratching their heads, worrying more than they have in almost a century and often blaming the United States. These are, no doubt, troubling times, but they are hardly the worst that could occur. Further, I have every expectation that we – in [...]

Among the issues that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and Republican standard-bearer John McCain should take up in this week’s presidential debate is the tragedy of delayed casualties from the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq.
Most Americans are familiar with the official Iraq toll – as of this week, 4,169 U.S. dead, along with a several hundred [...]

WASHINGTON — Huddled around tables in a private Georgetown garden, we waited for the main event, the reason that we had given up our evening: the promise of a bipartisan discussion on the major foreign-policy issues facing the United States.
Mere weeks before, I had written a column expressing the need for such an approach in [...]

North Korea has little to celebrate this week, on the 60th anniversary of its founding as a communist entity. Consider the dominant issues of those years: belligerence, conflict, oppression, human-rights abuses, cult-of-personality excesses, insidious nuclear research and repeated bouts of starvation.

The rare moment of national unity that Hurricane Gustav delivered, with the usual politicking on pause, reminded me of another time, when Americans more commonly joined together in a bipartisan manner.
It should not take the potential drowning of one of the United States’ most storied cities – or other crises, at home and abroad – [...]