August 18 – Refugees Pour Out of Syria into Iraqi Kurdistan; What Arabs See as Hypocritical Western Democratic Values; The Burning of Churches in Egypt

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the dramatic exodus of thousands of Syrian refugees flooding across the border into Iraqi Kurdistan. David Phillips, the Director of the Peace-Building and Rights Program at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, joins us to discuss the sudden outpouring of thousands of people across the Tigris River on a pontoon bridge for reasons that are not clear to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Agency trying to deal with the situation.

Part 2

Then we look into how the crisis in Egypt is seen in the broader Middle East and the role of outside players like the Saudis who support the Egyptian military and the Qataris who support the Muslim Brotherhood. Gregory Gause, professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont and author of “The International Relations of the Persian Gulf” joins us to discuss the growing alienation young Islamists feel about what they see as hypocritical Western concepts of democracy.

Part 3

Finally, we be joined by Youssef Ibrahim, Egyptian born columnist who served for eighteen years as the senior regional Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and for six years as Energy Editor for the Wall Street Journal. We discuss the recent attacks on Christian Coptic Churches by Muslim Brotherhood supporters and the difficult diplomatic position the United States government finds itself in with the Egyptian military.