Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

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Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, drive on the western front in Raqqa, Syria, during an offensive by the SDF to retake the city from ISIS militants. (Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images

CIA and the ‘Anti-Assad’ Program

by David Ignatius | Jul 27, 2017 | Opinion

What did the CIA’s covert assistance program for Syrian rebels accomplish? Bizarrely, the biggest consequence may be that it helped trigger the Russian military intervention in 2015 that rescued President Bashar al-Assad — achieving the opposite of what the program...

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The framers had one big point. Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Celebrating the True Meaning of Politics on July 4th

by JONATHAN BERNSTEIN | Jul 3, 2017 | Opinion

It’s time for July 4th, otherwise known as Independence Day. It’s one of my favorite holidays for all the reasons you’d suspect: flags, patriotic songs, and fireworks. But I’m uneasy with the trend towards making the US military might the...

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Sorry, grandpa. Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images

America And The New Travel Ban Rules

by Noah Feldman | Jul 2, 2017 | Opinion

President Donald Trump’s administration has issued guidelines through the State Department for who will be exempt from the travel ban from six majority Muslim countries, which the US Supreme Court allowed Monday to partly go into effect. The guidelines are highly...

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Airtight. Photographer: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

The Supreme Court Is the Last Leakproof Institution

by Stephen Carter | Jul 2, 2017 | Opinion

With another term of the US Supreme Court behind us, full of decisions both predictable and surprising, perhaps we should take a moment to consider a question very much of the moment: Why doesn’t the court leak? The rest of Washington has reached the point where...

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President Vladimir Putin at a news conference at the Kremlin in Moscow. (Reuters)

Putin between the Tsar and The Commissar

by Amir Taheri | Jun 2, 2017 | Opinion

After decades at the top of Russian politics, Vladimir Putin should not be an unknown quantity, at least as far as Western specialists are concerned. One question they ought to consider is how hard and how far Putin should be pushed to remain within the limits of...