12 years after invading Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity in the middle east, Dick Cheney’s dreams of a region rebuilt on the principles of free market capitalism and Jeffersonian democracy have not yet been fully realized.
The Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen threatens to turn what has been a civil war between competing branches of Islam into a wider regional struggle involving Iran. It could also destroy any hope of stability in Yemen. Even before the Saudis and their Arab allies started the bombing, Yemen was in severe distress; on Tuesday, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights warned that it is now on the brink of collapse.