Authors We Read

Below are some of the authors we read and quote often here at Terror-Free Syria.

People you agree with the most tend to represent your ideas most often. The grid below represent authors we like to read and tend to agree with them often.

This does not mean we agree with everything they write; however, it does mean we learn much from what they write even when we disagree with their ideas and analysis.

Many of those authors have or had quite interesting careers working for the U.S. Government, venerable newspapers, and respected Think Tanks. Their work, collectively, has influenced many U.S. Presidents and Vice Presidents, policy makers, diplomats around the world, and of course the U.S. Congress as it drafts laws to protect this nation.

Many of them write for important publications like The Washington Post, al-Arabiya, Foreign Policy, and National Review Online to name a few.

To learn more about these authors, just hover over the grid.

Their Twitter accounts, when applicable, are listed below their names. We highly recommend you follow them too.

Elliott Abrams Authors We Read

Elliott Abrams

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House.

Elliott Abrams

Authors We Read

Abdulrahman al-Rashed Authors We Read

Abdulrahman al-Rashed

Abdulrahman al-Rashed is the former General Manager of Al Arabiya News Channel. A veteran and internationally acclaimed journalist, he is a former editor-in-chief of the London-based leading Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, where he still regularly writes a political column. He has also served as the editor of Asharq al-Awsat’s sister publication, al-Majalla. Throughout his career, Rashed has interviewed several world leaders, with his articles garnering worldwide recognition, and he has successfully led Al Arabiya to the highly regarded, thriving and influential position it is in today.

Abdulrahman al-Rashed

Authors We Read

Tony Badran @AcrossTheBay

Tony Badran

Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he focuses on Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria, and the geopolitics of the Levant.
Born and raised in Lebanon, Tony has testified to the House of Representatives on several occasions regarding U.S. policy toward Iran and Syria. His writings have appeared in publications including The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and The Weekly Standard, and he is a regular contributor to Tablet and a columnist for NOW.

Tony Badran

@AcrossTheBay

Jackson Diehl @JacksonDiehl

Jackson Diehl

Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor of The Post. He is an editorial writer specializing in foreign affairs and writes a biweekly column that appears on Mondays. Diehl joined The Post in June 1978 as a reporter on the Metro staff. He joined the foreign desk in 1981, working as a correspondent from January 1982 until July 1992 in three of The Post’s bureaus: Buenos Aires, Warsaw and Jerusalem.

Jackson Diehl

@JacksonDiehl

Michael Doran @Doranimated

Michael Doran

Although he is an asshole personality-wise, we still like to read Michael Doran who is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He specializes in Middle East security issues.

In the administration of President George W. Bush, Doran served in the White House as a senior director in the National Security Council, where he was responsible for helping to devise and coordinate United States strategies on a variety of Middle East issues, including Arab-Israeli relations and U.S. efforts to contain Iran and Syria. He also served in the Bush administration as a senior advisor in the State Department and a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Pentagon.

Michael Doran

@Doranimated

Hannin Ghaddar @haningdr

Hannin Ghaddar

Hanin Ghaddar is the Managing Editor of NOW - English (mmedia.me), where she writes commentaries and analysis on Lebanese and regional politics, mainly Hezbollah, the Shia community, Syria and Iran. She contributes regularly to a number of magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times and Foreign Policy. Ghaddar is also a nonresident fellow at the Rafik Hariri Center - The Atlantic Council, and a former Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Fall 2012). Prior to joining NOW Lebanon in 2007, Ghaddar wrote for Assafir, Annahar and Al-Hayat and also worked as a researcher for the UNDP - regional office between 2002 and 2004. Ghaddar holds a Bachelor's degree in English Literature and a Master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies, both from the American University in Beirut.

Hannin Ghaddar

@haningdr

Frida Ghitis @FridaGhitis

Frida Ghitis

Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist, author and consultant. Follow her on Twitter at @fridaghitis.

She started her career at CNN, where she worked initially as a show producer, a unit manager for major news operations and later as a producer and correspondent covering mostly international news.

In addition to CNN, her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, NRC Handelsblad (Netherlands) and in scores of publications in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and beyond.

Frida Ghitis

@FridaGhitis

John Hannah Authors We Read

John Hannah

John Hannah is a senior counselor at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. John brings two decades of experience at the highest levels of U.S. foreign policy. During the first term of President George W. Bush, he was the Vice President's deputy national security advisor for the Middle East, where he was intimately involved in U.S. policy toward Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, the peace process, and the global war on terrorism. In President Bush's second term, John was elevated to the role of Vice President Cheney's national security advisor, where he served as the Vice President's top advisor on the full panoply of international issues from the Middle East to North Korea to Russia.

John Hannah

Authors We Read

Frederic C. Hof @FredericHof

Frederic C. Hof

Frederic C. Hof is a Resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

On March 28, 2012 President Obama conferred on Hof the rank of Ambassador in connection with his new duties as Special Adviser for transition in Syria. Hof was previously the Special Coordinator for Regional Affairs in the US Department of State's Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, where he advised Special Envoy George Mitchell on the full range of Arab-Israeli peace issues falling under his purview and focusing on Syria-Israel and Israel-Lebanon matters. He joined the State Department in 2009 after serving as the President and CEO of AALC, limited company, an international business consulting and project finance firm formerly known as Armitage Associates LC.

Frederic C. Hof

@FredericHof

Joyce Karam @Joyce_Karam

Joyce Karam

Joyce Karam is the Washington Correspondent for Al-Hayat Newspaper, an International Arabic Daily based in London. She has covered American politics extensively since 2004 with focus on U.S. policy towards the Middle East. Prior to that, she worked as a Journalist in Lebanon, covering the Post-war situation. Joyce holds a B.A. in Journalism and an M.A. in International Peace and Conflict Resolution.

Joyce Karam

@Joyce_Karam

Jamal Khashoggi @jkhashoggi

Jamal Khashoggi

RIP. Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist, columnist, author, and general manager of the upcoming Al Arab News Channel. Mohammad bin Salman ordered Khashoggi killed and dismembered.. He previously served as a media aide to Prince Turki al Faisal while he was Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States. Khashoggi has written for various daily and weekly Arab newspapers, including Asharq al-Awsat, al-Majalla and al-Hayat, and was editor-in-chief of the Saudi-based al-Watan.

Jamal Khashoggi

@jkhashoggi

Charles Krauthammer @Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer

RIP. Charles Krauthammer served as a contributor for FOX News Channel (FNC), where he contributes political commentary and analysis across FNC's daytime and primetime programming.

Krauthammer made frequent appearances on Special Report with Bret Baier, The O'Reilly Factor and FOX News Sunday. He was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated journalist and physician as well as a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a weekly panelist on PBS' Inside Washington.

Charles Krauthammer

@Krauthammer

Eli Lake @EliLake

Eli Lake

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist who writes about politics and foreign affairs. He was previously the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast. Lake also covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI, and was a contributing editor at the New Republic. In 2005 and 2006, Lake lived in Cairo as a correspondent for the New York Sun. He has traveled to war zones in Sudan, Iraq and Gaza. Lake is one of the few journalists to report from all three members of President George W. Bush’s axis of evil: Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

Eli Lake

@EliLake

Michael Ledeen @MichaelLedeen

Dr. Michael Ledeen is an internationally renowned scholar, whose ideas and insights on the workings of the Iranian government have been a critical part of the policy discussion for decades. He is a highly regarded expert on Iran’s Green Movement and maintains close ties to opposition groups inside Iran. His scholarship on Iraq, terrorism and international security have been sought after by those in and out of government and the intelligence community, the media and policy influencers.

Michael Ledeen

@MichaelLedeen

Judith Miller @JMfreespeech

Judith Miller

Judith Miller is an author and a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter formerly with The New York Times.

She is now an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of its magazine, "City Journal." Since 2008, she has been a commentator for Fox News, speaking on terrorism and other national security issues, the Middle East, American foreign policy, and need to strike a delicate balance between protecting both national security and civil liberties in a post-9/11 world.

Judith Miller

@JMfreespeech

Nawaf Obeid @NawafEObaid

Nawaf Obeid

Nawaf Obaid is a Visiting Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs since September 2012. He is a Senior Lecturer at the London Academy of Diplomacy at Stirling University, a Distinguished International Affairs Fellow at the National Council on U.S. Arab Relations and a Senior Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies.

Nawaf Obeid

@NawafEObaid

Harold Rhode @HaroldRhode

Harold Rhode

Harold Rhode received in Ph.D. in Ottoman History and later served as the Turkish Desk Officer at the US Department of Defense. He is now a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute. Rhode speaks Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, French, and some Spanish and Italian.

Harold Rhode

@HaroldRhode

Jennifer Rubin @JRubinBlogger

Jennifer Rubin

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective. She covers a range of domestic and foreign policy issues and provides insight into the conservative movement and the Republican Party. Rubin came to The Post after three years with Commentary magazine. Her work has appeared in a number of print and online publications, including The Weekly Standard, where she has been a frequent contributor. Prior to her career in journalism, Rubin practiced labor law for two decades. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and two sons.

Jennifer Rubin

@JRubinBlogger

David Schenker @davidschenker1

David Schenker

David Schenker is the Aufzien fellow and director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute. Previously, he served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as Levant country director, the Pentagon's top policy aide on the Arab countries of the Levant. In that capacity, he was responsible for advising the secretary and other senior Pentagon leadership on the military and political affairs of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories. He was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service in 2005.

David Schenker

@davidschenker1

Lee Smith @LeeSmithTWS

Lee Smith

Lee Smith is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard. A senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Smith is the also author of The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations (Doubleday 2010).

Lee Smith

@LeeSmithTWS

Bret Stephens @StephensWSJ

Bret Stephens

Bret Louis Stephens is an American journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2013. He works for The Wall Street Journal as the foreign-affairs columnist and the deputy editorial page editor, responsible for the editorial pages of the Journal's European and Asian editions. From 2002 to 2004, he was editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post.

Bret Stephens

@StephensWSJ

Sarah Stern @EMETruth

Sarah Stern

Sarah Stern has had a rather lengthy history of advocacy for the United States of America, the State of Israel, and the Jewish people.
Sarah is a member of the Executive Committee of AJIRI (American Jewish International Relations Institute), which works with various members of the diplomatic community in establishing deeper ties with the state of Israel.

Sarah Stern

@EMETruth

Michael D. Weiss @MichaelDWeiss

Michael D. Weiss

MICHAEL WEISS is a widely published journalist with a focus on developments in Syria, Turkey and Russia. He has a weekly column at NOW Lebanon and is the editor-in-chief of the forthcoming online journal, The Interpreter. Like a true Upper West Sider, his intellectual hobbyhorse is the anti-totalitarian left and its many discontents.

Michael D. Weiss

@MichaelDWeiss

Authors We Read