Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Bernie Sanders (V-VT) speak to press Wednesday about new joint resolution demanding U.S. military gets out of Yemen. (You Tube)

The Wall Street Journal predictably defends Trump’s shameful Yemen veto:

His veto of a congressional demand that the U.S. withdraw support from the Saudis in their war in Yemen keeps responsibility for foreign policy in the White House, where it belongs.

The WSJ‘s framing of the issue is misleading as always. The question is not whether the president should be responsible for conducting foreign policy, but whether the executive is allowed to involve the U.S. in a foreign war without Congressional approval. The Constitution clearly assigns responsibility for that decision to Congress. The president is not allowed to involve the U.S. in foreign wars on his own. Congress has reasserted its role in matters of war and decisively answered that the executive is not allowed to do that and must stop at once. Even the otherwise reliably pro-war David French has acknowledged that there is no question that U.S. involvement in the war on Yemen is unconstitutional:

It’s now official: The president who ran for office pledging to reduce military entanglements abroad is involving American forces in a foreign war in direct defiance of the plain language of the Constitution.

The foreign war in question also happens to be morally indefensible and a failure on its own terms, but the fact is that it would still be illegal for the U.S. to be involved in the war if those things weren’t true. The U.S. has been enabling war crimes and crimes against humanity in support of a war of aggression against a country that has done nothing to us and poses no threat to us. These are all very good reasons why support for the war on Yemen should be terminated regardless of its legality, but that support is also in violation of the Constitution. It takes extraordinary gall for the WSJ editors to invoke the wisdom of the Founders in their blatant attempt to subvert the clear meaning of the Constitution, but that is to be expected. The president does not have the authority to start or join wars at will, and in the absence of Congressional authorization he is acting illegally when he involves the U.S. in a foreign war. U.S. involvement in the war on Yemen is illegal and unconstitutional, and one way or another Congress and the public will bring it to an end.