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Saudi Arabia’s relentless war in Yemen is a destructive failure. The U.S.-backed military intervention that began one year ago has killed an estimated 6,400 people, half of them civilians, injured 30,000, and displaced 2.5 million. According to the UN, 80 percent of the population (20 million people) is now in need of some form of aid. This week the Saudis agreed to a cease fire and peace talks, but will the Obama Administration press them to end the carnage?

Art as politics in the powerful new exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York by Laura Poitras. Museum director Adam Weinberg sets the show "in the tradition of socially and politically engaged artists - progressive artists such as Ben Shahn and Alice Neal." He said, "The aim of the projections is to provoke moral and ethical responses." Indeed, they do. Or they should.

The Yemen crisis should serve as a prime moment for the U.S. to reconsider its alliance the Saudi regime, a regime that not only denies human rights to its own people but exports death and destruction abroad.

America's leading Sunni ally is proving how easily hubris, delusion, and old-fashioned ineptitude can trump even bottomless wealth. The price of oil dropped from $115 a barrel in June 2014 to around $44 today. While it costs less than $10 to produce a barrel of Saudi oil, the Saudis need a price between $95 and $105 to balance their budget. The country's leaders are now burning through their foreign reserves to make up the difference.

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Human rights experts charged the U.S. with sabotaging an independent UN inquiry into human rights violations in Yemen. The Netherlands put forward the resolution authorizing the inquiry, which the Saudis and their Gulf allies vigorously opposed. In what was termed “a shameful capitulation to Saudi Arabia” that “denied Yemeni victims their first real opportunity for justice,” the U.S. pressured the Dutch to modify and ultimately withdraw their resolution.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is warning of a major humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where violence “has radically increased” since March, when the U.S.-backed Saudi aerial offensive began. According to Teresa Sancristóval, the head of MSF’s emergency unit, “The impact of this conflict is much wider than only the bombing or the shooting. Yemen is predicted to be the first country in the world to have a capital without water, and water scarcity has an enormous impact.”

As Saudi Arabia continues its air assault on Yemen’s Houthi insurgents, supporters and opponents of the Riyadh monarchy are reconfiguring the political landscape in a way that’s unlikely to vanish once the fighting is over. The Saudis have constructed what at first glance seems a formidable coalition consisting of the Arab League, the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Turkey, and the United States. Except that the “coalition” isn’t as solid as it looks.

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Claims Iran is supplying the Houthis with weapons ignore the fact the group was already flush with American arms from ex-president Saleh.