Given the atrocities they have suffered in the past and the autonomy they are enjoying now, Kosovo's Albanians will never accept continued Serbian sovereignty. The time has come to give them what they want -- independence.

A Council-sponsored Task Force argues that the United States should support the evolutionary development of democracy consistently throughout the Middle East. It points out that a strategy to promote democracy entails inherent risks, but that "the denial of freedom carries much more significant long-term dangers." This report is also available in Arabic.

The Islamists' Other Weapon. Paul Marshall. Commentary. April 2005

Islamists are among the most garrulous of enemies: in a plethora of videotapes, audiotapes, declarations, books, letters, fatwas, magazines, and websites, they have explained their actions repeatedly and at length. Each bombing or other atrocity seems to be accompanied by the equivalent of a press kit, attempting to justify the action in terms of Islamic teaching and history. The goal of these extremists, as they have announced again and again, is nothing less than to restore a unified Muslim ummah (community), one ruled by a new caliphate, organized to wage jihad against the rest of the world, and, above all, governed by what they regard as the immutable divine law declared by God to Muhammad - the shari'a...