Within the space of a few months, Iranian proxies and allies in Iraq and Lebanon suffered significant setbacks in parliamentary elections. Some commentators have ventured that the era of Tehran’s hegemony may be over. While it is hard to predict the final outcome of these electoral shifts, such hopes might be premature.

With Vladimir Putin’s planned two-day war to topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government now in its third month and Russian casualties piling into the tens of thousands, concerns abound that Putin might take increasingly drastic steps to alter the disastrous situation he faces on the battlefield. To prevent those grim prospects—or at least contain their effects—President Joe Biden should turn to the playbook his predecessors drafted.

“We have lost everything; our homes have been stolen, looted, destroyed, and burned. There is nothing left for us there, to return for,” said an Iraqi Christian who fled to Jordan.

The manger scene these days really is the face of Christmas for most people and, perhaps not surprisingly, it is one of the aspects of the season that keeps causing trouble.

And human nature is such that great generosity often fuels greed, especially when unchecked by viable law and social expectations.

That Jesus Christ’s two advents are set against the backdrop of a region rarely associated with good news is ironic, but this year that irony is less obvious. Good things are happening in the Near East if you know where to look.

What is emerging is a return of three ancient regional power centers, would-be Persian and Turkish hegemons wishing to once more dominate in the domain of their past empires. In the middle is an Arab and Jewish coalition, anxious not to fall prey to their old masters.

One adjective that should never be used to describe the US retreat from Afghanistan is “surprising.” In fact, what happened in Kabul in 2021 was the natural next step on the inward-turning path Americans began walking in 2009.

The photographs and reporting from Kabul, the besieged airport there, and from other places in the broken land of Afghanistan are surely most troubling. But they indicate in no way American defeat.