ANDREW MCCARTHY: Republican Congress AWOL on Syria.

Where is the Republican-controlled Congress on Syria? By all accounts, it is busy cheerleading the president’s firing of 59 Tomahawk missiles at a foreign sovereign – an offensive attack that was unprovoked and unauthorized by Congress, rendering it unconstitutional. With a Republican in the White House, though, Republicans on Capitol Hill are all for executive overreach, despite having spent the last eight years chiding a Democratic president’s excesses and Middle Eastern misadventures.

Of course, the bottom line is the same: Congress does nothing. But at least during the Obama years, legislative spinelessness was swaddled in righteous constitutional rhetoric. Now, lawmakers outright encourage presidential imperiousness and their own consequent irrelevance.

A one-time strike is one thing, given that it could probably be justified on the grounds of a sarin threat to U.S. forces in the area — even if that justification were (ahem) somewhat specious.

But if President Trump wants to enforce some sort of no-chem-zone policy over Syria, which he does seem to want, then that ought to require an authorization from Congress.