Op/Ed: Georgie Ann Geyer

WASHINGTON -- What a conflict of stubborn wills! What a dangerous confrontation, darkly performed before all of America and the world. What a premonition of yet more trouble to come.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- If there is one word that most definitely does NOT define Fidel Castro -- in any of its possible meanings -- it is "resigned."

Washington, D.C. -- Common wisdom has it that adults, unlike children, lose their native ability to express surprise. As they grow in years, so too do they grow in cynicism, thinking they know everything when in fact they have lost only innocence.

WASHINGTON -- If, during the Great Family Squabble in the Middle East, someone suggested taking the whole bunch to a family counselor, there is little doubt what would happen:

WASHINGTON -- Even as violence explodes across the Middle East, this week we mark another violent and senseless attack of many years ago, one close to the United States -- one that stands in many ways as a paradigm for revolutionary change in today's world.

WASHINGTON -- In the mid-'80s, after I had been covering the post-colonial Third World for rather too many trying years, I began to notice some disturbing developments across the world.

WASHINGTON -- As always in the Middle East, the overnight transformation of terrorism to all-out war seems to have come out of nowhere. Here we were, minding our business, fighting only two wars in the region and merely contemplating a few more, when all hell broke loose in exactly the two places it wasn't supposed to.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- American Ambassador James C. Kenny established in the first few minutes of our interview the unlikely importance of today's Ireland -- often fondly called the "Celtic Tiger."