Back in town after three weeks of idle bliss. Not much to post, but here are two pieces I published in the past week. The first, for Thursday's Daily Star, urges the Arabs to welcome a second Bush term, since that would greatly enhance the U.S.'s remaining in Iraq; the second is my bi-weekly contribution to Slate's International Papers column.

More to come, though as a tidbit, I would recommend this Q&A session at Georgetown University with Paul Wolfowitz, somehow regarded as the new "dark prince" of the post-Cold War era. Here's a few choice quotes:

"You cited some things that Israelis have to change and you could make a longer list. You could have talked about settlements, for example. The President has talked about settlements, he's talked about the wall, he's talked about the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. There's no question that the President is prepared to put pressure on the Israelis to change. "

And this rather astute observation: "If the Palestinians would adopt the ways of Ghandi I think they could in fact make a more (laughter) - just very quickly - I believe the power of individuals demonstrating peacefully is enormous..."

Some of us who support the creation of a Palestinian state have been arguing that for a long time.