While nominally an American ally, the small nation uses its vast wealth to support terror and to cultivate anti-American sentiment. Daniel Rosen writes:

Qatar has provided clandestine financial and logistical support to Islamic State in recent years, as even Hillary Clinton acknowledged in a leaked email in August 2014. Moreover, Qatar funds Sunni groups linked to al-Qaeda and is the main financial backer of Hamas. While this should have [been sufficient reason to] destroy Qatari-U.S. relations, the Arab state continues to host a large number of American troops on its soil, which protect it from Gulf rivals, domestic dissidents, and Iran.

Meanwhile, the Qatari-funded Al Jazeera network regularly chastises the United States for [alleged] human-rights abuses. This hypocrisy is very rich, since Qatar abuses migrant workers, flogs dissidents, and says that women’s testimony counts only half as much as men’s. . . . Equally outrageous are Qatar’s increasingly successful attempts to lure American think tanks and universities into its sphere of influence. . . .

This duplicity will only end when the U.S. forces Qatar to come clean. There is no strategic advantage for U.S. troops to be based in Qatar instead of on the soil of more genuine Gulf allies.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.