The week
Biden takes away Saudi Arabia’s blank check for war crimes
The Biden administration announced on Thursday that it would suspend support for Saudi Arabia’s offensive military operations in Yemen, where the war has caused a huge humanitarian emergency, in addition to the coronavirus pandemic. Biden will apparently also appoint the experienced diplomat Timothy Lenderking as special envoy for Yemen. It remains to be seen exactly how it will play out, but as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Remarked in a statement, it looks like the beginning of diplomatic pressure to bring Saudi Arabia to an end to the brutal war in which he has been trapped since 2015, gets a general ceasefire and coordinates an international aid operation. The Saudi military has basically nothing to do without US support, and any strong signals from the US that it should turn it off are likely to be heeded. This is especially true now that Trump is gone, and Saudi dictator Mohammad bin Salman will face possible charges in 2018 for the cold-blooded murder of a US resident and columnist for the Washington Post, Jamal Khashoggi, in 2018. ordered. It is noteworthy that Biden reversing this is a Trump decision, the Yemeni policy actually originated under the Obama administration. This is a clear difference in the early months of 2009, when Obama detained George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense and planned to make a massive boom of troops in Afghanistan. Maybe two decades of costly, bloody and totally unsuccessful wars are enough? More stories from theweek.com5 scary cartoons about the problem of GOP Kenyan woman Marjorie Taylor Greene find a way to recycle plastic waste in bricks stronger than concrete Tom Brady reads before Super Bowl average tweets about his chin, his game and his dog for Jimmy. Kimmel