Yemen

On Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders circulated an open letter, calling on Congress to override last week’s presidential veto of a bill demanding a halt to US participation in Yemen’s civil war. The bipartisan bill was the first time Congress invoked the 1973 War Powers Resolution to check presidential foreign policy. Amid the president’s myriad other current problems, a potential veto override could be a chance to rub salt in the wounds. The issue of Yemen, then, will linger. Was Yemen worth the veto? The war, occurring the most secluded and oil-poor corner of the Arabian Peninsula, seems, to many, tangential to American interests.

It was fitting that Donald Trump’s blustery speech at the United Nations this week, in which he defiantly denounced ‘the ideology of globalism,’ came just one day after his top adviser John Bolton vowed limitless American military commitment to yet another global conflict. Bolton had essentially declared that US forces would be in Syria for perpetuity, or ‘as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders.’ Though this deployment was never formally debated, voted on by Congress, or subjected to a modicum of public scrutiny, Bolton saw fit to announce that US troops would remain there for an open-ended mission with no termination date.