For those of you who’ve been wondering over the past two months if the president of the United States can just do war whenever he pleases, the Constitution has an answer. And Donald Trump has another, one that *spoilers* completely ignores the good old document again.
So, there’s this American tradition dating back to 1973 called the War Powers Resolution, in which the president, after starting a war, is supposed to ask Congress within 60 days whether the war can keep happening. It’s a quaint piece of post-Vietnam housekeeping, making sure that the country doesn’t get bogged in another war for two decades and lose trillions of dollars, not to mention countless lives, as a result of the hubris of one man.
