Op-Eds Online

There have been a bunch art of Op-Eds written by world leaders online lately. Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote about Syria in the New York Times on the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and drew a scathing rebuttal from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in Russian online newspaper Pravda.ru. And Iranian President Hassan Rouhani set out his apparently moderate agenda in an op-ed in the Washington Post. Our President Obama and France’s President Francois Hollande have penned an Op-Ed together too about how their two countries are on the same page as far as international cooperation goes. There are Op-Eds written about a myriad of issues from climate change to nuclear weapons and détente.

An Op-Ed is an opinion piece and usually seen as a chance for the authors to garner some publicity and to perhaps sway public opinion about an issue. Op-Eds are often longer than a regular letter to the editor. The word Op-Ed defined means printed on the page opposite the editorial page in a newspaper, the page usually devoted to commentary, feature articles, and you guessed it, Op-Eds.

I’m thinking Op-Eds are like opinions which are like...you know, and everybody has them, yep, politicians especially.