Over the weekend, the warring sides in Yemen came about as close as they've come yet to an agreement to end that country's ~16 month long civil war, but talks in Kuwait appeared to collapse yesterday when negotiators for the Houthi-Ali Abdullah Saleh side rejected a UN peace plan, and the negotiators for Abd Rabbuh … Continue reading Still so far away

Don't get me wrong, there's always been a disturbing element of xenophobia/racism/antisemitism/Islamophobia underlying Donald Trump's popularity, and Trump has never been entirely just comic relief, but the longer this goes on and the more unhinged he appears, the less funny his absurdity and stupidity have gotten. The whole Trump phenomenon tipped from "funny" to "curious" … Continue reading When did Donald Trump stop being funny?

It took a little longer than I probably would have guessed four months ago, but the Libyan Front in the Global War on ISIS is finally open for business--indefinitely, it appears: US warplanes carried out air strikes on positions of the Islamic State (IS) group in the Libyan city of Sirte for the first time … Continue reading To Sirte, With Love

Something unexpected happened in Syria over the weekend. No, it's not that the rebels, led by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (hey, whatever they want to call themselves), launched an offensive to try to break the siege of eastern Aleppo--as important as Aleppo is, and as prestigious as it would be for any rebel faction to get … Continue reading Watching Aleppo