Hal Brands repeats a very popular lie about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East: Every recent president gets their Middle Eastern war, whether they want it or not. Since Ronald Reagan’s time, each administration has engaged in at least one significant military...
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...
The Costs of Biden’s Backing for the War in Gaza Keep Increasing
Three U.S. servicemen were killed and dozens others were injured by a drone attack on their base in Jordan today. This latest attack is one of more than 160 launched since October 7 by local militias in Iraq and Syria at bases where U.S. forces are stationed. The war...
Biden’s ‘Sustained Campaign’ in Yemen Is Illegal and Pointless
The U.S. and Britain continue to wage war on Yemen while pretending that they aren’t at war: The U.S. and U.K. launched strikes against eight Houthi targets Monday, the two countries said, in a continuing bid to stop the Yemeni rebel group’s attacks on ships...
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...
