Middle East Archives | What It Means to Be American

The Path to Mars Goes From Lebanon to Pasadena

Growing Up in the Middle East, I Loved John Wayne and Gazing at the Stars. I Came to America Believing Nothing Was Impossible.

Charles Elachi and colleagues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

By Charles Elachi
September 22, 2014

“Only the United States could do this.” Those words were uttered by the head of a foreign space agency who was one of my VIP guests at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, on August 5, 2012, the night the long-awaited Mars Curiosity rover landed successfully on the Red Planet. I’ll never forget hearing him say those words…

Does America Need a Tahrir Square?

The U.S. Has Let the Public Square Become a Metaphor. That Can’t Be Good for Our Democracy.

People gather in Tahrir square to celebrate the anniversary of an attack on Israeli forces during the 1973 war, in Cairo

By Gregory Rodriguez
April 14, 2014

Maidan Square in Kiev. Taksim Square in Istanbul. Tahrir Square in Cairo. Recent democratic movements around the globe have risen, or crashed and burned, on the hard pavement of vast urban public squares. The media largely has focused on the role of social media technology in these movements.

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