In a Report From a Distant Border, I Glimpsed Our Brutal Future

Once in a while, some single thing manages to encapsulate all that feels terrible about our world today. For me, this week, it was a bone-chilling report from Human Rights Watch documenting how Saudi border guards had killed hundreds — perhaps thousands — of Ethiopians seeking to cross from Yemen into Saudi Arabia.

It landed in my inbox on Monday with concussive force. The accounts were so brutal that I struggled to read the 73 pages in one sitting: A 14-year-old girl named Hamdiya described waking up after an attack:...