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...
No, Don’t ‘Take the Fight’ to the Houthis
Steven Cook wants to have a new war with Yemen: As a result, if the United States wants to protect freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and its environs, it is going to have to take the fight directly to the Houthis. Escalation against the Houthis is a phenomenally...
‘Another Night of Killing and Massacres’ in Gaza
The Associated Press reports that dozens more civilians were killed in last night’s airstrikes in northern Gaza: “It was another night of killing and massacres,” said Saeed Moustafa, a resident of the Nuseirat camp. He said people were still crying out from the rubble...
Sounding the Alarm on the Starvation of Gaza
The level of acute food insecurity in Gaza has become catastrophic, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report released today: Between 24 November and 7 December, over 90 percent of the population in the Gaza Strip (about 2.08 million...
