- David Ignatius
- Opinion Writer
David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog. Ignatius has also written eight spy novels: “Bloodmoney” (2011), “The Increment” (2009), “Body of Lies ” (2007), “The Sun King” (1999), “A Firing Offense” (1997), “The Bank of Fear” (1994), “SIRO” (1991), and “Agents of Innocence” (1987). Body of Lies was made into a 2008 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. Ignatius joined The Post in 1986 as editor of its Sunday Outlook section. In 1990 he became foreign editor, and in 1993, assistant managing editor for business news. He began writing his column in 1998 and continued even during a three-year stint as executive editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. Earlier in his career, Ignatius was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covering at various times the steel industry, the Justice Department, the CIA, the Senate, the Middle East and the State Department. Ignatius grew up in Washington, D.C., and studied political theory at Harvard College and economics at Kings College, Cambridge. He lives in Washington with his wife and has three daughters.
- Syria: The blood of future massacres is on Russia's hands
- The threat to global health from the hunt for bin Laden
- A rare look inside al-Qaeda’s Yemen operations
- The Iranian view on how to strike a deal
- Syria’s neighbors are growing restless
- Thinking Afghan unthinkables
- China’s wobbly transition
- The Summit of Irrelevance
- Pakistan blew its chance for security
- A compelling plan for Iranian talks
- Obama’s foreign policy: Dealing from a position of strength
- Libyan missiles on the loose
- An economic boom ahead?
- Osama bin Laden didn’t escape subordinates’ criticism
- Politicizing the drone debate
- Obama: Finally a commander in chief
- How Osama bin Laden is winning, even in death
- Europe’s gathering economic storm
- Bo Xilai and China’s corrupt secrets
- The stage is set for a deal with Iran
- For a new order in Iran, look to post-revolutionary France
- The advantage of earlier elections in Afghanistan
- In Afghanistan, who follows Hamid Karzai?
- The squeeze on Iran
- Obama’s signal to Iran
- From Pakistan, answers needed about Osama bin Laden
- The court can’t stop the health-care revolution
- Ousting Syria’s Assad through a ‘soft landing’
- Book-club picks for Election 2012
- Defusing the India-Pakistan standoff
- How al-Qaeda tried to control the media
- A lion in winter
- The bin Laden plot to kill President Obama
- How to end the Afghan mission
- How to sink Iran’s regime? Sanctions, not bombs.
- U.S., Pakistan take a breather
- The House intelligence committee: A rare example of bipartisanship
- Decoding Obama's Message on Iran
- Yemen’s peaceful transition
- ‘Oscar diplomacy’? Obama ought to try it on Iran
- Negotiations with the Taliban find some momentum
- How to bring down Assad
- Getting Iran to back down on its nuclear program
- Dunderheaded damage to U.S.
- Pakistan and Osama bin Laden
- Nixon goes to China: A smart journey looks even smarter
- A ‘cosmic wager’ on the Muslim Brotherhood
- Nixon’s great decision on China
- Why the U.S. should resist stoking the chaos in Cairo
- Panetta adds a few details about U.S. step back from Afghanistan
- Is Israel preparing to attack Iran?
- Two cheers for ‘Super Mario’ Draghi
- Panetta suggests earlier Afghan withdrawal
- Endgame in Syria
- Davos and disconnected elites
- A special journalist
- The coming debate over American ‘strength’ abroad
- Mansoor Ijaz, instigator behind Pakistan’s ‘Memogate’
- Iran gets the message from Washington
- Iran is finding fewer buyers for its oil
- Romney’s misfired zinger on Taliban talks
- Iran and the U.S. need a way to communicate
- The challenge of getting the Taliban to the table
- ‘The Orphan Master’s Son’ an audacious, believable tale
- Obama closes the book on the 9/11 era
- The danger in a declining middle class
- The year of the befuddled leader
- From Iraq’s guardian to its counselor
- Joy to the troops
- How quick to the exits in Afghanistan?
- Maliki’s spokesman disputes allegations of TWA hijacking, embassy attack
- For Obama, time to unveil the vision thing
- In Iraq, Maliki is a man of the shadows
- A bleak look at America’s future
- Remembering Joe Robert
- U.S. and Turkey find a relationship that works
- The risks of military cutbacks
- Panetta: Israel should ‘just get to the damn table’ with Palestine
- Pakistan’s pique and the Afghan war
- The next challenge for the Middle East protesters
- Seeking counsel from a wise man of the Arab world
- Change and balance in the Saudi kingdom
- Saudi Arabia expands its power as U.S. influence diminishes
- GOP’s loose lips sinking their covert options
- By suspending Syria, Arab League finally breaks from its past
- Stuck in the middle with Europe
- Cairo’s Christians worry about Egypt’s next chapter
- The fears of Egyptians great and small
- The Mideast’s new game
- The secret stories of very public men
- The Mideast deal that could have been
- No regrets over pushing the U.S. into war with Iraq
- Obama chose the right course on Libya
- Stopping terror plots will require more than luck
- Bahrain to U.S.: Stand up to Iran
- Around the world, rage against the elites
- Intelligence links Iran to Saudi diplomat’s murder
- Those Keystone Iranians
- What Iran’s alleged terror plot tells us
- Robert Ford, making a difference in Syria
- A hint of deterrence in U.S. drone-war strategy
- The killing of Anwar al-Aulaqi: The White House’s drone attack policy
- What’s behind the U.S.-Pakistan rift
- Adm. Mike Mullen’s legacy
- Caution fills Obama’s playbook
- From Pakistan’s ISI, an act of folly
- The price of becoming addicted to drones
- Is it Hobson’s Choice time for Panetta?
- Growing mistrust among European banks
- Israel’s new problem with the Arab Street
- The covert commander in chief
- A ‘credible threat’
- The 9/11 Commission’s unheeded warning
- A successful post-Bush foreign policy
- Can Petraeus handle the CIA’s skepticism on Afghanistan?
- A body blow against al-Qaeda
- 10 years after 9/11, al-Qaeda is down but not out
- Gaddafi appears to be on his way out
- The Kabul attack: Beyond the casualties
- An uncertain Arab transition
- A Gates team at the Pentagon
- Department of Internet Defense
- Democracy, challenged
- Afghanistan laughs at itself
- Hollywood’s small screen
- U.S. dilemma in Iraq: What to do with a Hezbollah killer
- How do you prevent a terror attack?
- Tipping points: How the News Corp. scandal blossomed
- U.S.-Russia joint missile defense?
- Plotting a post-Assad road map for Syria
- Renewed cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistan
- Obama’s communications gap
- The world according to Rupert Murdoch
- In Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers’ courage and adaptability are on display
- Against the clock in Afghanistan
- Petraeus’s unfinished legacy in Afghanistan
- Rethinking ‘the long war’ on terrorism
- The decisiveness in Obama’s Afghanistan speech
- Avoiding a summer of blood
- End of the love affair with Pakistan
- In Libya, a minefield of NATO miscues and tribal politics
- Obama’s partnership deficit
- Testing the Afghan exit ramps
- Rewriting Rumsfeld’s rules
- The blurring of CIA and military
- The whiff of revenge taints the Arab Spring
- Positive signs in Afghanistan
- Obama’s Mideast policy looks good — on paper
- What Obama must do following his Middle East speech
- Writing the Middle East’s new narrative
- Bashar al-Assad’s endgame: Can a bloodbath be avoided?
- Pakistan is missing the U.S. message on terrorism
- Did Pakistan know bin Laden was ‘hiding in plain sight’?
- Internal strife emerges as Tehran looks westward
- A cautionary tale for Mideast peace
- How the U.S. found and finished Bin Laden
- The pursuit of bin Laden
- Will Pakistan erupt like Egypt?
- Syria’s turmoil shakes Iran and Hamas
- Tom Donilon’s Arab Spring challenge
- When delay on deficits means more pain
- Drone attacks in Libya: A mistake
- The contradictions of the Arab Spring
- Time to up the ante on Egypt
- Syria’s Assad, caught between reform and repression
- The next national security team
- Egypt’s unlikely ‘founding fathers’
- What’s at stake in U.S.-Pakistan spy talks [UPDATED]
- Mideast uprisings show the power of the weak
- Egyptian democracy’s growing pains
- The Libya liquidation strategy
- Bashar al-Assad stages his own coup
- Obama speech offers clarity on Libya policy
- Obama’s fuzzy narrative in the Mideast
- Gates underlines the dangers in the Middle East
- An allied intervention in Libya
- Obama weighs talking to the Taliban, Hezbollah
- The blood money deal to release CIA contractor Raymond Davis
- High stakes over Bahrain
- Building a culture of tolerance in the Mideast
- A transition for Arab economies
- Obama’s low-key strategy for the Middle East
- A warning to would-be interventionists in Libya
- U.S., Pakistan could use a Muslim ritual to resolve Raymond Davis case
- In Lebanon, Hezbollah is watching, and waiting out, the Arab uprisings
- Buying time with Iran
- Restarting the economic machine
- Will Syria become more democratic?
- A tough balancing act for Jordan
- A tough balancing act for Jordan
- Egypt's unknown element
- Egypt's unknown element
- In Egypt, real politics is about to begin
- In Egypt, real politics is about to begin
- With help from the U.S., Egypt can gain a republic
- With help from the U.S., Egypt can gain a republic
- In the Middle East, a Catch-22 for the CIA
- In the Middle East, a Catch-22 for the CIA
- Egypt through Obama's lens
- Egypt through Obama's lens
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