Christopher Dickey

Obama should realize what Lincoln understood: that there may be better angels in the nature of some people, but there are others who are willing to weaken, even destroy a nation to serve their own self-righteous self-interest, and they will do it in the name of the Constitution.

There's such an uproar every time terrorists fail to carry out a serious attack on the United States, you have to ask what's going to happen if, or when, they finally succeed. The printer-cartridge parcel bombs discovered on their way to Chicago are just the latest example. In each case the American rabid right, much of the supine American press, and the terrorist propaganda machine acted as if the bad guys had scored big.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on top of the world right now, but maybe that's not where he really wants to be. Almost by default, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund keeps accruing power in the midst of crisis.

Reading the WikiLeaks documents on Iranian support for attacks in Iraq, even an arrant pacifist would have to wonder just how much provocation is necessary before the United States decides to strike back with a vengeance. Extensive reports in the Iraq war logs describe the Iranian role working with members of Lebanon's Hizbullah to train Iraqi guerrillas to ambush American soldiers.

Americans have forgotten the rest of the world. Nothing could make that clearer than the candidates running for election to the U.S. Congress and the Senate right now. If you watch the campaign ads, listen to the debates or the candidates themselves, Afghanistan barely figures, Iraq is history, the Middle East peace process a yawn.

After nearly a decade, the men and women fighting off terrorist attacks on the homeland are tired and worried. Take a recent breakfast I had with an old friend: I'd asked him why all the alerts and warnings of late (including the one reaffirmed on Thursday by the State Department) have centered on Europe. Not the United States? "Because we're missing something," he said as we waited for our coffee in a diner last week. "Because we're blind."

The recent State Department "travel alert" for Europe proves once again that Osama bin Laden can rely on his enemies to help spread his message of fear and hate.

The State Department has issued a "travel alert" for Europe—underscoring the effect Muslim-bashing politicians have had on the terror threat on the continent.

The threat to burn Qurans in Florida is a perfect example of the way America's own Christian Taliban are creating, promoting, and exploiting our national paranoia.

The terrorist history of a Catholic priest in Northern Ireland—and the magnanimous reaction of his victims—ought to serve as a lesson about how to overcome bigotry. It's particularly instructive in light of the so-called Ground Zero mosque.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is looking pretty weak before the election. So he's returning to his old law-and-order pose. Problem is, in his effort to exploit public fears, Sarkozy is courting extremists.

Running a country can be a thankless job, but these 10 leaders have managed to win serious respect.

The GDP measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.

American troops might have had a real shot at winning hearts and minds if they'd just been able to deliver the basic service in Iraq and Afghanistan: electricity. Instead, they furnished an object lesson in superpower incompetence.

It's become a scandalous summer in France. Allegations are mounting that the octogenarian heiress to the billions of the L'Oréal cosmetics fortune, Liliane Bettencourt, may have had some unseemly dealings with the current minister of labor, Eric Woerth, long a key fundraiser for President Nicolas Sarkozy's party.

The future of the passenger jet may look surprisingly like a larger version of the hybrid automobile.

Obama came to office evincing what seemed like a deeply held belief that he could negotiate even with America's enemies. Now that it's time to engage our foes, including terrorists, his administration is making that job harder all the time.

The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan will come back to haunt us if we don't improve life for the their populations. There's a model—dated but still full of potential—for how to do that well: British colonialism.

A battle for the future of Iran is shaping up in outer space, and it's not about missiles or nuclear weapons. It's about information—the ability to jam the signal that brings the news to the Iranian people via satellite television. And for the moment, it's a fight the Iranian government appears to be losing.

Where Israel was once fleet and subtle, the flotilla raid is just the latest indication it has become clumsy and noisy.

Despite what some raving pundits have claimed, immigrants aren't responsible for a violent crime wave in the Southwest. In fact, cities with large immigrant populations are actually safer places to live.

Do clothes make the Muslim?The French cabinet approved a draft law this week that would make it illegal for women to veil their faces so that only their eyes—and sometimes not even their eyes—are visible. Wearing what are called burqas or niqabs, the women in question keep their bodies cloaked and their hands gloved even in the heat of summer. They say this is their religious duty and their civil right.

More than $600 million in paintings were stolen from a Paris museum. But they'll be hard to fence, and the investigation will be long and frustrating.

All Americans—whether brown, white, or black—should be required to carry a passport showing they are red, white, and blue.

The bent, shuffling figure in a porkpie hat shown on the news being hustled to an Air France plane by U.S. marshals on Monday was impossible to recognize as Manuel "the Pineapple" Noriega, the Panamanian dictator I used to know.

The Faisal Shahzad case shows how clever reconnaissance and good police work can disrupt terrorist networks.

One of the greatest challenges of driving in Egypt is knowing when to stop at a stoplight. Cars flood past the red signals as if they weren't there, and earlier this month on the way to see Mohamed ElBaradei, the man of the moment in Egyptian politics, I asked my taxi driver what the trick was. "You stop when you see the police," he said, as if that ought to be obvious.For generations, Egypt and virtually all other countries in the Arab world have been ruled as if that same principle applied to...

The video of two Reuters newsmen being shot by Americans in 2007, however grim, shows business as usual in a war zone.

To restore its reputation, the Vatican must identify with the victims of repression—including the victims of the church.

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu would do anything to protect Israel—as long as he doesn't have to believe in peace.