TIME Magazine

"It's kind of unbelievable how well they've managed the economy," says Afshin Molavi, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who specializes in Middle Eastern economies. "Turkey has become a darling among foreign investors. ...

And as Amanda Ripley, a TIME contributor and author of the book The Unthinkable: Who Survives in Disasters and Why, points out, during disasters, people have a tendency to move slowly or shut down completely as a protective measure. ...

It's not only on the Palestinian side of the equation that the foundation of the "peace process" as we've known it has crumbled. As former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy noted last week, Netanyahu who in the mid 1990s represented the right-wing ...

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama made two shocking breaches of foreign-policy-establishment etiquette. The first was to suggest if the U.S. had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan, Obama, as President, would commit U.S. force to kill bin Laden. This statement of utter common sense was denounced by Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries. "He basically threatened to bomb Pakistan, which I don't think was a particularly wise position to take," she said. And it was similarly ridiculed by John McCain.

When President Barack Obama announced on May 1 that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, I was among those who headed to the White House. The mood in Lafayette Square was joyous, ebullient, cathartic — though hardly the bacchanal of vengeful jingoism that some in the media have portrayed it to be, or an expression of "orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed" as David Sirota claimed on Salon.com.

Osama bin Laden long fancied himself something of a poet. His compositions tended to the morbid, and a poem written two years after 9/11 in which he contemplated the circumstances of his death was no exception. Bin Laden wrote, "Let my grave be an eagle's belly, its resting place in the sky's atmosphere amongst perched eagles."

It was a beautiful, sun-splashed Cairo morning, and a brass band was playing in Tahrir Square. The musicians, about two dozen in all, wore driven-snow white trousers and red military jackets with gold tassels. They performed a repertoire of short, patriotic anthems with gusto, if less-than-perfect technique. A crowd of onlookers began to swell, and before long, people were snapping cell-phone pictures of the band and hoisting children on their shoulders to watch.

The war in Libya is not going well. Muammar Gaddafi shows no sign of giving up power. His forces' siege of the rebel-held city of Misratah has killed upwards of 1,000 people, including two Western journalists. One month in, NATO's air campaign is plagued by halfhearted commitment and intracoalition blame-passing. The rebels on whose behalf the U.S. and its allies intervened have failed to advance much beyond their strongholds in eastern Libya. Only a few inveterate optimists seem to believe the anti-Gaddafi forces still have a chance to win.

It has become virtually an article of faith among America's chattering class that the Western intervention in Libya cannot be considered a success unless Muammar Gaddafi is removed from power. Reacting to President Obama's speech on Libya last week, CNN's Eliot Spitzer said, "If ...

Ten days ago, a besieged Arab leader decided to crush his country's democracy movement. First, he called in 2,000 foreign troops to suppress the uprising. Then he declared martial law and cut off phone and Internet services. At dawn he deployed tanks to clear the streets and ordered his forces to arrest or shoot anyone who tried to resist. Government troops surrounded and seized a hospital used by demonstrators to treat their wounded. Medical personnel were prevented even from taking away the dead bodies.