U.S. Opinion Page Roundup
Lawrence Summers may no longer be part of the Obama administration, but he's got some advice for his former boss regarding health care reform: get the problem solved, but don't overpromise when you can get things fixed.
Thanks to difficulties during the launch of the federal health care exchange website, writes the former head of Mr Obama's National Economic Council in the Washington Post, "a shadow has been cast on the Federal government's competence". He argues that conservative opponents who have done everything they can to undermine the law are as much to blame, however, and history will not judge them kindly.
Elsewhere on opinion pages today, Paul Krugman has some kind words for France, whose debt was recently downgraded by Standard & Poor's. He writes in the New York Times that the nation is the target of "negative propaganda" by political opponents who want the nation to dismantle its social safety net.
The United States has painted itself into a corner on Egypt and should "accept that they may not meet our democratic ideals," writes Aaron David Miller, vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
According to the Washington Post's EJ Dionne, conservatives who are opposed to abortion but object to mandatory coverage of maternal care under health care reform are being hypocritical.
Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert, has a solution for the problem of what to do with Syria's chemical weapons stockpile: Albania has the facilities and expertise to handle the task, if the world would give it financial support.
An overlooked result of the US National Security Agency's surveillance programs, writes the Miami Herald's Edward Wasserman, is that it could lead to a fragmentation of the Internet into regional systems and an end to "globalised informational freedom."
Ken Starr, president of Baylor University, writes that Christian sects are being purged from the Middle East, and the United States is doing little to stop it.