Halting UNRWA Funding Is Malicious Collective Punishment

Peter Beinart is a bit shocked by the sheer cruelty of the U.S. and European cutoff of funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA): What does that mean in the midst of this humanitarian cataclysm? UNRWA is currently sheltering 1.2 million displaced...

Biden’s Dangerous Yemen Blunder Is Already Backfiring

The immediate consequences of U.S./U.K. military action in Yemen shouldn’t surprise anyone. Just as opponents of the strikes said, attacking the Houthis has made the threat to commercial shipping worse: The US and UK’s decision to hit back at Houthi militants after...

Re-Designating the Houthis Is a Major Error

The Biden administration will undo one of the few good things it has ever done: The Biden administration plans to put the Houthi rebel group back on one of its lists of terrorist organizations, days after the U.S. launched strikes on its facilities in Yemen in...

The US Is Choosing Escalation and a Wider War

Spencer Ackerman is not impressed by defenses of the U.S./U.K. strikes in Yemen: The respectable set says that once the Houthis started attacking Red Sea shipping, a U.S. reprisal was inevitable. There's a lazy-person's truth here, for sure. Like the Royal Navy before...

Don’t Intervene in Yemen

The phenomenally stupid idea of attacking the Houthis is getting more support: Saudi Arabia is among a number of Middle Eastern countries telling the West they back strikes against the Houthis in Yemen whose attacks on shipping in the Red Sea have diminished...

Another Pointless Assassination in Baghdad

It’s January in an election year, so it must be time for the U.S. to assassinate someone in Baghdad: A U.S. Special Operations drone strike in Baghdad on Thursday killed a senior figure in an Iran-linked militant group that is part of Iraq’s security apparatus,...

The Soleimani Assassination Really Was Stupid and Reckless

Jeffrey Friedman wrote a somewhat interesting essay on how voters judge hawkish posturing from political leaders, but this section is nonsense: Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 provides a good example of how it is hard to...

Famine Is Devouring the People of Gaza

The UK Times reports on worsening famine conditions in Gaza. Those in northern Gaza are at greatest risk: Barely any aid has reached the people in the north of Gaza, who are separated from the rest of the population by the fighting. Phone signals are cut off and large...