The First Post of 2014

I took a break over the holidays to recharge my batteries and keep myself sane, but the entire human race didn’t stop or slow down, so there’s news.

Guess what the news looks like from the Middle East? That’s right. It’s bad.

Hezbollah may have moved long-range Scud missiles from Syria into Lebanon, and Al Qaeda reconquered Fallujah.

The way things are going in Syria, Al Qaeda might even take over Damascus. We are long past the date when a non-horrible outcome from that war was possible. And it could very well make the next war between Israel and whatever remains of the Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah bloc even worse than it would have been otherwise.

I need a little time to get caught up on recent developments and write my next dispatch from Cuba. In the meantime, if you want to read anything cheery, look at Tunisia. That country has a lot of problems, including many of the Middle East’s typical problems, but it was ahead of its neighbors before the Arab Spring, it was ahead of its neighbors during the Arab Spring, and it’s still ahead now.