Blog Postings

For decades there have been conversations, tough questions, “ah-ha” moments, deep insights and common sense shared in one-on-one exchanges with John Kerry and Chuck Hagel. In all those times interacting with them, watching them, analyzing them, not one umbrella has been spotted. These men are not appeasers or pleasers. They are not those who seek

After a few years of absence, sadly, the Old Geezer returns with all his wisdom to help me understand in my traditional end-of-year column: There are automatic lights where my office is now.  You walk in the room, the lights come on. Then, if there is no movement for a period of time, they go out.

It was Zaire then. As I sat along the shore of Lake Tanganyika in Bujumbura, Burundi,   I marveled at the moment. Baby hippos splashed playfully in the water as their adults looked carefully from across the way. The sun set with purples and yellows and pinks, in rays shooting up to the sky in sharp

It was only two months since the fighting ignited in Bosnia. Scary but not yet out of control. But food was already getting tight so the spring air – and rumors of bread available – brought the citizens of Sarajevo out to the market for a hastily formed bread line. That was May 27, 1992,

President John McCain looked at the election projections for 2004 and did something rare: he smiled.  The economy was rebounding. The wide variety of wild-card independent candidates that ran for the House in 2002 off-year elections actually won and helped force concessions — and thus compromise — on both elder political parties. Osama bin Laden

The possible Balkanization of Syria is an increasingly likely prospect – at least for the short-term – and could provide a historic counterpoint in the Middle East to what the West did to carve up the region almost a century ago. With the Ottoman Empire defeated after World War One, the trimuphent Allies sought to

That perfect moment of the triumph of the people happened again in Syria.  The rebels captured another border crossing between Syria and Turkey, lowering the Syrian flag and raising their own banner.  It is a symbolic moment of victory – and in a bloody civil war abundant with various factions and no real positive endgame

Quick. When was the last time we had an undefeated professional sports team in America?  If you guess the Miami Dolphins 1972 football team – as many people do – you are wrong.   The answer is the 2011 Washington Kastles professional tennis team, which went 16-0 last year and won the World Team Tennis championship,

It essentially was an accident. Saddam Hussein had been whipped in the 1991 Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush called on Iraq’s Kurds and Shia to rise up. They did  –  but Bush was all talk; there was no U.S. military help and they were slaughtered. So as Kurdish refugees clung to the freezing mountains

We are now deep into year two of the Arab world convulsions. Not one country across the North African-Middle East arc is settled. Even where it sounds quiet it is not. Two years from the first cry of freedom, very few things are how the outside world predicted. As Egyptians vote for their president in

There were many dangers faced by reporters during the four-year Bosnia war. Gunfire. Freezing. Food poisoning. Checkpoints manned by drugged out crazies. Yet one fear stood out, and it was usually away from the fighting. That was going to Zenica, a city in the central part of the area controlled by the Bosnian government. The

The American Revolution and the broad romantic view of U.S. democracy have often provided inspiration and guidance to those seeking democracy in their own nations – and for good reason. The amazing set of circumstances that made the American Revolution spark and then succeed, the lofty words of human rights that fueled the new government