The drone strikes on Saudi oil facilities this past weekend have unfortunately spurred dramatic warmongering rhetoric.

Rather than serve as a starting point for further conflict with Iran, they should more than anything remind Americans of the folly of our ill-fated interventions in that part of the world.

In the aftermath of the strikes, the Houthis, participants in a brutal civil war in Yemen, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Some have pointed the blame at Iran, while French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has suggested there’s not clear evidence one way or another on the origins of the drones.

However that turns out, it’s reflecting on a few important points.

It is important to keep in mind that an attack on Saudi Arabia is not an attack on the United States.

President Trump, unfortunately, took to Twitter to express a thought at odds with how our system of government is supposed to operate: “Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!”

While it’s clear that President Trump greatly values the word of the same Saudi leadership responsible for the torturing and killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, his expressed willingness to take the Saudis at their word and take action accordingly is at odds with our constitution at the least.

The best one can hope is that President Trump is engaging in bluster for the sake of bluster, though it can’t be ignored that the president has previously bypassed the Congress in support of Saudi Arabia’s military adventurism.

Such is the case with ongoing U.S. support for the brutal Saudi-led war in Yemen and against the Houthis.

The Saudi-led coalition, often armed with American-made weapons, has routinely been cited by human rights for its attacks on civilian buildings and gatherings in Yemen, including hospitals, weddings and funerals.

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UBI grows in popularity among local governments American support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen has never been authorized by Congress and President Trump recently vetoed a rare bipartisan effort by Congress to end U.S. involvement.

Congress must not continue to allow President Trump, or any president for that matter, to continue to hold so much unilateral power over the deployment of American military resources.

For decades, the United States has found itself embroiled one way or another in the Middle East and Iran. For all the trillions of dollars spent and obligated, thousands of American lives lost, all the governments toppled and hundreds of thousands of people killed, the benefits to American national security have been scant.

We urge restraint in escalating tensions with Iran, the end of U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s Yemen war, congressional curtailment of the president’s war powers and a focus on peace through diplomacy above all else.