"It is the responsibility of the international community, of the global civil society, to come and take care and assist the transformation of Syria, in collaboration with the Syrian civil society," says the exiled leader of the Deir Mar Musa monastery near Damascus.

The many works on view at the Met in New York demonstrate how artistic motifs were shared and used by people of different faiths in different regions over the centuries.

"We are together in front of God and recognize each other as believers...these Muslim, Christian and Jewish, they worship God in a kind of choir," Father Paolo Dall'Oglio told correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro in describing the work of his monastery before violence erupted in Syria.

In the wake of White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan’s speech on drone ethics and targeted killing, we talk to Yale Law School professor Stephen Carter, author of The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama.

"The administration says that the drone is the smallest amount of force that we could use. They say it's accurate and therefore it discriminates perfectly," observes Yale Law School professor Stephen Carter.

“The idea of the Talmud is that you are allowed to ask questions about everything,” says Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. He calls the Talmud “the central pillar of Jewish culture” and “a vast book encouraging you to ask questions.”

"People across the political spectrum, right to left, are beginning to wonder if we are committed to a mission whose success is dubious now at best because of the way we’ve defined it," says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"For weeks the newspapers have included articles about the mounting deaths and suffering of ordinary Syrians. These articles implicitly pronounce a familiar imperative: something must be done. But in the face of this imperative, we are compelled by another: force is justified only where there is reasonable hope of doing more good than harm."

“I feel the voice of God echoing from the mountains all over this place,” says a Syrian Christian pilgrim visiting Deir Mar Musa, an ancient desert monastery in Syria reestablished by Jesuit priest Paolo Dall’Oglio.

“When we’re using missiles that kill but place no risk,” suggests Yale law professor Stephen Carter, “that means it’s easier to fight, which means it’s more likely we’ll fight.”