“Toward a Post-Obama Middle East”

There are elements in this article with which I disagree, but I do agree that the United States lack, and have lacked for some time, a coherent strategy in the Middle East:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425114/middle-east-after-obama-conrad-black

I attended a dinner last night hosted by BYU’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies in connection with its 2015 conference on “Religion, Law, and Social Stability,” which formally ended yesterday but effectively concludes this afternoon.

To my delight, I was finally able to meet Nabil Fayyad, a prominent (and very courageous) Syrian intellectual — an outspoken Damascus-based critic of both the Assad regime and its Islamist opponents — with whom I’ve been in contact via email and video conferences for a number of years.  (To give you a sense of who he is, here’s an item about him from 2004, along with an article from 2012.)  We sat next to one another and had a great conversation.

Nabil wants me to come to Syria.  (I haven’t been there in roughly a decade, I would guess.)  He tells me that, with the Russians on the scene, things have improved dramatically.  A major power is finally taking effective action against ISIS, and he is greatly encouraged.

I heard on the news last night, by the way, that the prime minister of Iraq has invited Russia to come in and help in his country, as well.  And Russia will be cooperating there, as it is in Syria, with its Iranian ally.

In the words of President Obama, this is “change you can believe in.”