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A journalist embedded with American forces in Anbar province in 2007, describes the situation in 2015 after the many sacrifices of Iraqis and American soldiers. He tells the story of one Iraqi police captain he calls Ismail, who helped the U.S. forces turn the tide in Anbar province, and now finds himself a refugee in Baghdad.

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Gen. Martin Dempsey took a cautious approach to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Syria. He did not approve of the way Gen. McChrystal expanded U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, and the hasty manner in which the Iraqi army was trained under his predecessors leading to some commanders being appointed who later became members of sectarian death squads. Under his command the U.S. limited its role in Afghanistan and Iraq and handed more responsibility to local forces. Gen. Dunford who succeeded Dempsey as chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff for the U.S. follows the cautious approach set by Dempsey. Dempsey's approach extends to what he believes is an Heisenberg effect in physics where when you you observe or touch something it changes the way it functions and operates. For critics such as Senator McCain, who served in Vietnam as a pilot, if Dempsey did not want to intervene in some country, he could invent the reasons not to get involved. President Obama exceeded the caution exercized by Dempsey, leading to a situation where the U.S. after hasty action under a Republican president seemed to lurch in the opposite direction under his Democratic successor by not taking action where U.S. presence was needed, followed by a corrective course to make up for this....

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Sohrab Ahmari of the WSJ talks to Masrour Barzani at a forward base on the Syria-Iraq border in Dec. 2015, at a time when terrorist attacks in France and the U.S. are shifting public opinion in the UK, Germany and the U.S., as well as France.

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Denmark's Social Democrats tighten rules on immigration, requiring immigrants to work, and not allowing them to live off allowances. This follows a shift in opinion in favor of the tighter rules proposed by the opposition Liberal Party for immigrants before the 2015 general election.

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A Syrian opposition group describes the mislabeling of opposition groups in Syria by the Obama administration.

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During the early weeks of the Libyan people's struggle the Wall Street Journal was one of the rare voices that stood up for freedom in Libya, saying the U.S. had to have the will and was not so overstretched that it could make a difference working with its allies in NATO. It took some time for the Obama administration to make up its mind by which time the Gaddafi forces would have entered Benghazi. It was the leadership of Sarkozy of France and Cameron of Britain that made the decisive difference at the right time. And as the tide turned it was the young people of Libya who could be seen in the video footage who showed bravery against the organized heavily armed forces of the Gaddafi regime. The lesson from the U.S. support for the Libyan people's movement for democratic government is that the U.S. can make a moral difference and a strategic difference when it follows the right instincts that have guided the country since its founding.

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Clemens Wergin of Germany's Die Welt newspaper offers an alternative German view on the disengagement policies adopted by Germany as the Middle East unravelled, and points to the costs of following the policies of doing little followed by U.S. president Obama. He says Europe faces a security crisis in its neigboring region of North Africa, similar to how it faced a crisis in the Balkans, which has resulted in the refugee crisis; and that it needs to work with its partners Britain and France to develop its own policies if the U.S. continues to pursue policies of disengagement from the Middle East, North Africa and other regions.

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The 2015 budget for the European Union borders agency Frontex was increased by 17.5% from 97 million euros to 114 million euros, yet it remains underfunded with the huge influx of refugees through Greece and from Turkey. For 2016 the budget increases by 54% to 176 million euros. It is based in Warsaw, Poland. It does not have its own border guards, planes and ships, which are provided to it by the member states of the EU and paid for from its budget. It was not deisigned to address a problem of this magnitude at EU borders and some new form of the agency needs to be developed.

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Helene Cooper and Worth point to the vacillating response to the Arab Spring and movement for democracy and freedom in the Middle East of the Obama administration and President Obama. The dangerous overtones of this lack of U.S. leadership in the region as the U.S. completes a withdrawal from Iraq without an agreement for a residual presence, sees diplomacy reaching an impasse with Iran's development of nuclear weapons, and the Syrian civil war drawing in Turkey with its long border with Syria, and drawing in Saudi Arabia as a defendor of Sunnis in Syria. The stakes for Russia in Syria were minimal compared to that of people in the Middle East and the U.S., yet it had an outsized influence with its early military assistance to the Assad regime and the lack of U.S. leadership to resolve the situation in Syria in favor of the democracy movement.

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Exhibitions in Istanbul from the period 1970-1980 and the violent activity from protest groups and others during that period. Lingering effects today with crackdown on journalists by the Erdogan government and polarization of public opinion.

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Friedman describes how the farmers who left the rural areas in search of work and settled outside Aleppo and other towns after a severe drought were radicalized by the lack of help from the Assad regime. About 800,000 people migrated from their farms in the countryside to cities in Syria, and settled outside the cities without help and basic services from the Assad regime. When the call for democracy came they were the first to join the protests.

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Only refugees from war zones are eligible for asylum in Germany. People coming from the Balkan countries looking for better job opportunities are being sent back home in September 2015.