I actually bought the argument that if we democratized Iraq, we could create a space for venting some of the stuff that's going on in the Middle East in these autocratic regimes that is expressing itself through jihadism, because it has nowhere else to express itself.
After I made my tour in the Middle, into the Middle-East and Africa and visited Mecca and other places, I think that the separation [ from the Black Muslim movement] became psychological as well as physical, so that I could look at it more objectively and - and separate that which was good from that which was bad.
It would behoove the world to become used to this fact: that without a just solution to the Palestine tragedy, there can be no stable peace in the Middle East.
Peace in the Middle East isn't going to be created by another war or violent act on the other side.
Certainly we've seen the enormous changes across the whole of the Middle East. The democratic genie is out of the bottle.
A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.
So they caught Gadhafi in a storm sewer and shot him. Or as they call it in the Middle East, an orderly transfer of power.
Syria is geographically and politically in the middle of the Middle East.
Throughout the Middle East, there is a great yearning for the quiet miracle of a normal life.
I mean, our disaster in Libya also unleashed enormous amounts of armaments. We are the world's leading arms dealer, arming all sides everywhere. And have we made the Middle East a more secure place? We're only making it more desperate, more catastrophic and more violent.
I believe the government of the United States should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.
The Bible teaches that history began in the Middle East, and someday history will end in the Middle East.
We cannot continue to see the Middle East in the context of 911. We must see it in the context of 2011.
If you really wanted to settle down the Middle East, if what you wanted was change in the Middle East, it is perfectly obvious that the first step is resolving the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.
Nixon would like to consign us to to the level of the most backward countries in the whole Middle East. Why lower us to the standard of the Saudis rather than raising the Saudis to meet us?
We spend less time with each other now than we did during the presidency. When you're president, you're usually out and back in the same day - at least I was. I just came from a trip to the Middle East last week, where I was gone for five nights, and when I left, Laura [Bush] was out of town.
Israel is the American watchdog in the Middle East, and that's why the Palestinians remain victims of one of the longest military occupations.
The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.
[the war in Iraq] "could have terrifically good effects troughout the Middle East
Things were very different back in 1992. There was unrest in the Middle East, we had a gridlocked Congress, and everybody was talking about Bill Cosby.