From WNYC Studios.

I'm Brian Lerer.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Tuesday, January 30th.

The attack in Jordan that killed three Americans and wounded dozens more raises a number of questions.

One of them is,

did you know we had U.S. troops in Jordan? Did you know that they were part of something called Operation Inherent Resolve? What? Who ever heard of that? Most Americans have not, and I'm sure

Congress, not sure if Congress ever debated or explicitly

authorized it. So how militarily involved in the Middle East should the United States be?

Not just in terms of military aid to countries there, the U.S. wants to support. That's one thing,

but how militarily involved with American bodies and American blood and why? Most Americans

probably thought the Iraq war and ISIS war periods were over. Next question, should the United

States be withdrawing all its support for the United Nations Relief Agency for Palestinian refugees?

Some of its workers have been found to have been involved in the October 7th attack on Israel.

You've probably heard that story the last few days.

But the agency employs thousands of people and is helping ease a real humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people.

A possible analogy, we'll discuss this later,

there are no perfect analogies, but what if the NYPD was found to have some bad apples

committing abuse? Would we suspend funding for the whole police department or prosecute those individuals and look to see

what systemic changes are needed? Different countries are answering the question about unrefunding

in different ways. And yet another question, can the United States and Qatar get Israel and Hamas

to yes on a new ceasefire for hostages plan or even a longer-term

...