Start with what should not be controversial: striking an international airport, with civilians in the terminal, is indefensible. Twelve dead and 309 injured are not "military operations," whatever the Houthi spokesman calls them. Anyone on the Left who reaches for a euphemism here has misunderstood what we say we believe about civilians in war.
But the Left's duty does not end at condemnation, and the next move being floated in Washington is the one that should alarm us. Saudi Arabia has asked for urgent American help. Donald Trump says he is "considering" whether the United States will join Saudi retaliation. Considering. As if entering a war were a restaurant choice.
No one has said that Congress will decide. That silence is the story. A decade of Yemen policy shows what happens when American war-making is left to executive musing. In 2019, Congress passed a resolution to end U.S. support for the Saudi campaign, and Trump vetoed it. Washington then spent years refueling, arming and advising a coalition whose air campaign, along with its blockade, helped produce one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of this century. UN estimates put the toll in the hundreds of thousands, most of it from hunger and disease rather than bombs.
That history matters because of the coalition spokesman's promise to respond "in accordance with international humanitarian law." It is a sentence we have heard before. It was said before the 2016 strike on a funeral hall in Sanaa and before the 2018 bombing that hit a school bus in Saada. Those attacks were carried out with American-made munitions. Nobody asking Americans to trust that assurance has earned that trust.
The Houthis are no liberation movement. They run a repressive authoritarian statelet, jail critics and aid workers, and recruit children. Condemning them is easy. The harder point is that bombing them harder has never worked. The Saudis themselves concluded as much. They accepted a truce in 2022 and then entered direct talks with the Houthis, because a decade of airstrikes had not produced a victory. A new round of retaliation, with American planes joining in, does not restore deterrence. It is the same failed strategy with a bigger sponsor.
There is also a hypocrisy that the Gulf's friends in Washington would rather not discuss. Closing an airport, cutting off a population's access to the outside world, and treating civilian infrastructure as a pressure point are exactly the tactics Yemenis lived under for years, when Sanaa's airport was shut to commercial traffic and the port at Hodeidah was choked. I am not drawing a moral equivalence. The 12 dead in Riyadh are real people and deserve grief. But Yemeni children deserve the same, and our politics has rationed that grief by who our allies are.
So what should Democrats and the Left demand? First, a congressional vote before any American strike or direct participation in offensive operations. If the case for joining is strong, let it be made in public, under oath, with a vote attached. Second, a hard line between helping Saudi Arabia defend its cities and joining a campaign of retaliation. Intercepting missiles is defense. Joining strikes in Yemen is war. Third, conditions on arms sales and a diplomatic push to revive the Saudi-Houthi talks, the only track that has ever reduced the violence.
The lazy view says this is simply a terrorist attack and the response is obvious. It is neither simple nor obvious. The people with the most to lose from another round of escalation are those who already lost the most: Yemeni civilians, and Americans who will be told, again, that a war without end is a war without a vote.
How it may affect me
If you have travel through Riyadh planned, check with your airline: the airport is closed and flights are being diverted. A wider regional conflict could also push up oil prices and, with them, fuel costs. And if U.S. forces join the fighting, your member of Congress is the person who can demand a vote.
