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Senator McCain and Senators Lieberman and Graham say the U.S. is squandering goodwill of people in the Middle East by not taking action to to help the democracy movement in Syria in its struggle with the Assad regime. They say this is a unfair fight as the rebels are lightly armed and face the artillery, helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft of a brutal regime. The lack of active U.S. and European support only prolongs the struggle and cost in human lives.

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Mahmoud Gebril is interim prime minister of the Transitional National Council of the Libyan Republic. Here he outlines assistance his government needs to succeed in establishing a democratic process in Libya in place of the Ghadaffi regime. This includes official recognition by the U.S., access to Libyan funds overseas, NATO operations, and humanitarian aid.

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Kirkpatrick and El Shaikh give an account of the days and events leading to the ouster of president Morsi of Egypt in July 2013. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood forge an alliance with the military under Gen. Sissi, a younger officer open to working with the Muslim Brotherhood in power. Morsi is elected with the support of liberals and the military under Gen. Sissi against a Mubarak era candidate. Morsi wins with 51% of the vote, which liberals say would not be possible without their help. Morsi fails to form an inclusive government. His authoritarian tendencies from decades of working under a strictly hierarchical leadership in the Brotherhood, a personal style that does not take into account opposing views, and a lack of experience in democratic forms of governance where the opposition, the media and the judiciary, are important to balancing powers of the executive, lead to alienating liberal opinion and younger protesters who initiated the struggle against Mubarak. Gen. Sissi tries repeatedly to achieve a compromise including appointment of a new prime minister and cabinet but Morsi rejects all efforts, leading to the takeover by the military and appointment of the chief justice as president and ElBaradei, as prime minister....

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Michael Gerson was there in June 2005, with then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and nine Egyptian opposition figures, including presidential candidate Ayman Nour, in a shabby Cairo conference room. Rice was in that room to call on President Mubarak to allow free elections. Nour was skeptical about the result. The Mubarak legacy was to undermine all legitimate opposition to thirty years of rule. Gerson makes a remarkable statement when he says that the universal desire for self-government is rooted in the natural human resentment of humiliation. A 26 year old fruit vendor in Tunisia is humiliated and set himself on fire in protest, setting off protests against servility, oppression and silence. He calls the lack of faith in American ideals a pervasive failure of foreign policy elites. Someday he says, Americans are likely to say the same for China, with the complete absence of a policy for anticipating a democratic transition.

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The 25-30 fishing vessels and tugboats that have supplied Misurata by sea, act as an essential lifeline to the city besieged by Ghadafi. The boats operating under cover of darkness carry both humanitarian supplies and war needs for defence of the city. Libyan volunteers staff these boats, volunteers who believe that the people have finally found their voice against the Arab strongmen who have run countries in their region for decades. The defence of Misurata has another passion for these people, men like Saif Nasser who runs the tugboat Al Iradah 6- and this is to prove to the world that the Libyan people's struggle is not a sectarian struggle which should end with a partition of the country's east from the west. Misrata is a coastal city only 130 miles from Tripoli's coast. If the city is being defended against all odds, it tells the world that this is a popular struggle to build a new democratic Libya with civil rights and civil society, and a voice in their government, similiar to the struggles in Syria, Egypt and Tunisia....

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The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its leader Khairat Al Shater. Al Shater talks to the WSJ's Kaminski on his plans for Egypt and his demands for reinstatement of the elected parliament, the newly elected president of Egypt Mohammed Morsi taking that position, and the military backing off from its decree of unlimited powers over the president and parliament. He says he does not want a collision with the military and prefers to achieve the goals over three or four years, feels the military betrayed them, and admits to having too many disagreements with other pro-democracy groups in Egypt. His new emphasis is on a broad based effort and national accord to bring democracy and the rule of law in Egypt. Al Shater is a new breed of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in that he is a businessman having made money in furniture, software and other businesses, and at the same time a devout Muslim who spent years in Saudi Arabia. An interesting fact about the Muslim Brotherhood is that many of the leaders are academics, engineers and doctors or businesspersons, yet devout Muslims....

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The Washington Post's veteran Middle East correspondent, Jim Hoagland, says there are some important lessons to take from the experience in Libya. The Arab rulers who entrenched themselves for decades wasted the bulk of their oil wealth. It was right for Palestinians to disassociate themselves from these regimes. The French took the brunt of the fight in helping Libya free itself from the Gaddafi regime. This is an understatement as without Sarkozy's initative and Cameron's unflagging support, without France and Britain's early support, Gaddafi's forces would have overrun Benghazi and ended the struggle for democracy in this part of the Arab world. U.S. President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates did little in the early days when there was dire need. Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel continuously resisted supporting France and Britain in Libya. The U.S. Obama administration and Turkey gave their support only after the perilous period- when the fate of the rebels fighting for freedom hung on a thread- was past. Hoagland calls Gates view of "feckless Europeans" shortsighted. Hoagland sees this as an opportunity for Europe to take a larger more active role. ...

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Adly Mansour, a judge with the Supreme Constitutional Court in Egypt, is appointed by the military as president of Egypt. He was to take office as Chief Justice before the June 2013 protests in Egypt intervened to delay this. On July 3, 2013 he was sworn in as president before the Supreme Court. Mansour is one of two judges selected by president Morsi. He is a graduate of Cairo University, and studied public affairs and management in Paris before joining the judicial sytem in 1977. His decisions as judge went against both Mubarak and Morsi, showing his independent position as a judge on the Supreme Court. The judiciary is now taking an important role in Egypt similar to the role it has played in Pakistan, another Muslim country adopting democratic forms of governance after decades of coups and military rule since the 1950's. The larger Muslim countries in the Middle East, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, and Egypt are faced with the challenge of balancing the demands of modernization with tradition, the demands of educated urban population with the more devout Islamist rural population, and creating stable transitions in democratically elected government. Islamists such as president Erdogan in Turkey who described western democratic forms of government as a train to get to a destination have still to take in to account the need to incorporate opposing secular views in governance. In this sense Turkey is not the model for governance as it once appeared for Egypt, Pakistan Iran and other Muslim countries. A new consensus in society needs to develop that respects all aspects of democratic governance including respect for the role of the opposition in a democracy, the role of an independent impartial judiciary, and the role of independent media. This will take time to develop just as it took time to develop in Europe and North America....

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Germany's chancellor Merkel draws attention to Russia's human rights record in a meeting with Russian president Putin in Moscow, Nov. 16, 2012. The German chancellor tells Putin not to be so sensitive to criticism from the opposition, saying before the meeting: "I ask that not every bit of criticism is seen as destructive. Open a German paper and read what is written there. If I were always getting offended, I would not last even three days in my job." Germany's special envoy to Russia, Mr. Schockenhoff, has been especially critical of Russian suppression of dissent and opposition groups. Russia's response is that it will talk to other countries as trading partners but not about its domestic affairs. The Russian government sees the two way trade of $120 billion between Germany and Russia as "an air bag" to prevent any significant deterioration in relations. Siemens signed a contract for 675 locomotives with Russian Railways during the Merkel visit.

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The shooting of former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the opposition in Russia, in Red Square, Moscow, on Feb. 28, 2015.