By now, most Americans are aware of the shocking details of what might be called “Signal-gate.” Classified material regarding military strikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen were openly discussed by senior Trump administration officials on the Signal messaging service that included Jeffrey Goldberg, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and editor of the Atlantic magazine. The breach of secrecy risked mission failure, including the loss of U.S. military lives.

Who is to blame? Not Goldberg, who responsibly delayed revealing secrets until after the bombing of Yemen. The buck stops with senior national security officials: President Donald Trump, national security adviser Mike Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. National security is too important to be left to amateurs. Merit-based appointments should be the order of the day. Elon Musk — are you listening? Maybe a firing or public rebuke would concentrate minds on preventing a reprise of this national security embarrassment. If federal employees do not get a pass, why should their superiors? They need to do better than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who drew scrutiny for storing classified information on a private server in her home.

We were glad to hear Waltz eventually taking “full responsibility” for the disaster, if belatedly, and acknowledging that it was an embarrassment during an appearance on Fox News late Tuesday. But Americans are unlikely to find that especially reassuring.

The scandal raises another question. How did we end up in a conflict against the Houthis without a congressional declaration or any sort of executive attempt to seek consent from the legislative branch? Congress appears AWOL. We’ve seen this rodeo before in Libya, Somalia and other misadventures.

Most of the outrage over this story has focused on carelessness leading to the leak of classified war plans. But let’s take it a step further — if the secrecy of this military planning isn’t being exercised with care, how can we be sure the administration’s plans to fight the Houthis aren’t either? What is the end game? The inability to answer that question is a formula for calamity.