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 stupid idea. For one thing, turning a nuisance into a full-blown war will not secure shipping through the Red Sea. It will interrupt commercial shipping even more. If shipping companies are nervous about being shot at with drones and missiles now, they will absolutely refuse to send their ships through an active war zone. The problem that the military action is ostensibly meant to solve will become ten times worse.

In addition to the direct risks to U.S. ships and personnel that escalation would involve, “taking the fight” to the Houthis would be a waste of limited military resources at a time when the U.S. is already overstretched. Escalating against the Houthis could lead to their resumption of attacks on Saudi and Emirati territory and a breakdown of the truce in Yemen that has largely held for the better part of two years. The Houthis might respond to U.S. attacks by striking at energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, and they have already demonstrated that they can do considerable damage to Saudi oil installations in the past.

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Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

‘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 of a house hit by an airstrike on Wednesday.

“We are unable to get them out. We hear their screams but we don’t have equipment,” he said.

Continue reading “‘Another Night of Killing and Massacres’ in Gaza”

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 people) was estimated to face high levels of acute food insecurity, classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse). Among these, over 40 percent of the population (939,000 people) were in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and over 15 percent (378,000 people) were in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5).

Nearly 400,000 people were already in famine conditions at the start of this month, and almost a million more were in the next worst phase. That’s 1.3 million people that were suffering from famine or being one step away from it. This is already one of the most severe cases of extreme hunger in decades, and it is the direct result of the war and the siege. The rest of the IPC’s report is even more alarming:

Between 8 December 2023 and 7 February 2024, the entire population in the Gaza Strip (about 2.2 million people) is classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse). This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country. Among these, about 50 percent of the population (1.17 million people) is in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and at least one in four households (more than half a million people) is facing catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5, Catastrophe) [bold mine-DL]. These are characterized by households experiencing an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion of coping capacities.

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

Our Rotten Foreign Policy Status Quo

Perry Bacon probably speaks for many Americans that don’t follow U.S. foreign policy closely and are then shocked by how terrible it can be:

Like a lot of Americans, I don’t follow foreign affairs as closely as I probably should. I have generally assumed that the United States, particularly with Biden in office, plays a largely positive role abroad. Watching senior US. officials adopt a deeply flawed approach and then make misleading statements about it has made me more worried and skeptical of America’s actions in other parts of the world. If Team Biden is this disingenuous about what’s happening in Gaza, should I trust its words about Ukraine, Sudan or China?

Most Americans pay little attention to how our government acts around the world, but when people in this country are directly confronted with how dangerous and destructive US policies can be they are often appalled. There are many cases where the cruelty of US policies goes unseen by most of the public, and so those policies don’t meet with much criticism and opposition. The frequent use of broad sanctions to attack the people of other countries is one example of this, but we also saw how US backing for the war on Yemen went on for years before there was significant pressure to end our government’s involvement. Greater public scrutiny is no guarantee that monstrous policies will end, but it makes it harder for the government to maintain the status quo.

The war in Gaza is shining a spotlight on just how morally and strategically bankrupt the US approach to Israel and Palestine has been for decades, and it also shines a light on the crimes that our government enables through its support for client governments. It might be too much to hope that this wakes a lot of Americans up to the harm that our foreign policy does around the world every day, but there is no question that it exposes the rottenness of the status quo. There are occasionally moments when the public sees the extent of this rottenness and demands something better, and we may be witnessing something like that with the backlash against this war.

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

Another Shameful US Veto at the United Nations

Friday was another shameful day for the Biden administration and the United States:

The United States vetoed a United Nations resolution Friday backed by almost all other Security Council members and dozens of other nations demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. Supporters called it a terrible day and warned of more civilian deaths and destruction as the war goes into its third month.

The excuses that Robert Wood, the U.S. deputy ambassador, gave for opposing the resolution added insult to injury. He said that a ceasefire would “only plant the seeds for the next war,” as if the continuation and intensification of the current war weren’t already doing that to a much greater extent. The resolution called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the unconditional and immediate release of all hostages, but the U.S. representative had the gall to call it “unbalanced.”

The U.S. objected that the process had been “rushed,” but speed is obviously crucial when there is a major humanitarian crisis that requires urgent attention. If the U.S. hadn’t shot down other Security Council resolutions on this conflict over the last two months, the situation would not be quite as far gone as it is. Wood claimed that the resolution was “divorced from reality,” but nothing could be more divorced from reality than an administration that is actively stoking the conflict while pretending that a ceasefire is bad for the cause of peace.

The resolution that the U.S. vetoed had the support of almost 100 other member states, including several major treaty allies. Vetoing this measure doesn’t just leave the U.S. isolated on the world stage, but it also confirms in the eyes of the world that our government is a rogue great power that cannot be trusted. In addition to being profoundly wrong in itself, this veto will do significant damage to our country’s reputation in the eyes of almost all other nations in the world. Agnes Callamard of Amnesty International summed it up well:

US veto of ceasefire resolution displays callous disregard for civilian suffering in face of staggering death toll. It is morally indefensible, a dereliction of the US duty to prevent atrocity crimes and a complete lack of global leadership. Just appalling.

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

The Devastation of Gaza

The Financial Times reports on the scale of destruction in Gaza:

Citing estimates of damage to urban areas, military analysts say the destruction of northern Gaza in less than seven weeks has approached that caused by the years-long carpet-bombing of German cities during the second world war [bold mine-DL].

“Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne – some of the world’s heaviest-ever bombings are remembered by their place names,” said Robert Pape, a US military historian and author of Bombing to Win, a landmark survey of 20th century bombing campaigns. “Gaza will also go down as a place name denoting one of history’s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns.”

Continue reading “The Devastation of Gaza”