When Edward Gibbon was writing about the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century, he could argue that transportation hadn't changed since ancient times. An imperial messenger on the Roman roads could get from Rome to London even faster in A.D. 100 than in 1750. But by 1850, and even more obviously today, all of that has changed.

Unlike some, I don't claim to hold the mystic key to the future. But judging from past events, it seems to me that those who want to prophesy the imminent end of America's unique global role have a harder case to make than those who think we will limp on for a while, making a mess of things as usual.

The Arab states don't seem to do a good job of providing for their own people, so I am not sure why they would suddenly develop an ability to help the Palestinians.

It is a kind of ego booster, the way Egypt's winning the 1973 war, in the first stages, was an uplift. But I did not find when I spoke to people that the war in Iraq was seen as the major issue in American-Arab relations.

I just want to find some inner peace, and I think I'm getting there, slowly but surely.

This is all about a media war that continues to rage between the old and new media. Unfortunately for our soldiers, these brave Americans are caught in the crossfire.

When you're happy and at one with yourself and have come to peace with who you are, that radiates.

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there's no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That's all crap.