should be on trial for war crimes. The entire original PNAC letter is evidence of a conspiracy to take the country to war.

Normally I don't have too much affection for Mideast royalty but Queen Noor was a pretty good spokeswoman for a political viewpoint that rarely gets an airing in US media. She uses the glamour she has to good effect.

The most important point that she made that keeps being missed is that the Arab and Muslim public matters. And are not mushrooms. Whenever I see the word "moderate Arab regime", I wince. The "moderate Arab regimes" include Saudi Arabia and Egypt where the "regime" is never moderate as regards its own people, only in its compliance to Western (and US) interests.

or Muslim people named, based on reporting.

NYTimes Op-Ed by Roger Cohen questions whether Ross is the right person for any change in US approach.

It’s important for Obama to get his message right from day one. With the Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya networks broadcasting 24-7 images of the carnage in Gaza, where there are more than 800 dead, mobilization in the Arab world is intense. Rage against Israel, and behind it America, bodes ill.

Change is needed, and not just in the intensity of U.S. diplomatic involvement with Israel-Palestine. Some fundamental questions must be asked.

Does regarding the Middle East almost exclusively through the prism of the war on terror make sense? Does turning a blind eye to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank that frustrate a two-state solution, and the Israeli blockade of Gaza that radicalizes its population, not undermine U.S. interest in bolstering moderate Palestinian sentiment?

SNIP

Enlightenment will require a fresher, broader Mideast team than Obama is contemplating. As noted in “Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East,” a fine evaluation of U.S. diplomacy by Kurtzer and Scott Lasensky, the lack of expertise on Islam and an Arab perspective was costly at Camp David. At one point, the State Department’s top Arabic translator had to be drafted because “the lack of cross-cultural negotiating skills was so acute.”

Obama should take note, name an Arab-American and an Iranian-American to prominent roles, and beware of a team that takes him — and the region — back to the future.

He said during the campaign that “an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel” can’t be “the measure of our friendship with Israel.” Those were words. Now, with Gaza blood flowing, come deeds.