The Felon's Risky War In Venezuela

Overnight the Felon authorized military attacks in Venezuela and the seizure of Nicolás Maduro and his wife.  All was done without advising Congress or Congressional approval - a requirement for going to war against a foreign nation.  The Felon's supposed justification was that Maduro has federal warrants out against him for allegedly being a drug kingpin.  Never mind the fact that the Felon just recently pardoned  the former president of Honduras who had been convicted of bringing hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States and numerous polls showing the vast majority of Americans oppose war in Venezuela. With the disasters of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq still in recent memory where wars were launched (albeit with Congressional approval) with no real plan for what would follow regime change.  The Felon's statements that "we would be running Venezuela" - which possesses the world's largest oil reserves - are troubling and suggest several possibilities: (i) another Iraq like debacle in the aftermath, (ii) the Felon and his cronies enriching themselves with plundered oil, and (iii) further distrust of America by South American and European allies. Will Greenland, Panama or some other country be the Felon's next targets? Pieces in both The Atlantic and Politico look at the illegality of the Felon's unauthorized war against a sovereign nation and the concern that chaos or the rise of someone even worse than Maduro.  First, this excerpt from The Atlantic:

This morning, President Trump unilaterally launched a regime-change war against Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, ordering strikes on multiple military targets in the country and seizing its leader and his wife. They were “captured and flown out of the country,” Trump stated on Truth Social.

After Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed Congress and asked it to declare war on Japan. Prior to waging regime-change wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, George W. Bush sought and secured authorizations to use military force. Those presidents asked for permission to conduct hostilities because the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, unambiguously vests the war power in Congress. And Congress voted to authorize force in part because a majority of Americans favored war.

The probable illegality of Trump’s actions does not foreclose the possibility that his approach will improve life for Venezuelans. Like too many world leaders, Maduro is a brutal thug, and opposition figures have good reason to insist he isn’t the country’s legitimate leader. . . . . But “toppling Maduro is the easy part,” Orlando J. Pérez, the author of Civil-Military Relations in Post-Conflict Societies, warned in November. “What follows is the hard strategic slog of policing a sprawling, heavily armed society where state services have collapsed and regime loyalists, criminal syndicates, and colectivos—pro-government armed groups that police neighborhoods and terrorize dissidents—all compete for turf.” Two groups of Colombian militants “operate openly from Venezuelan safe havens, running mining and smuggling routes,” he added. “They would not go quietly.”

Now that the United States has involved itself this way, its leaders are implicated in securing a stable postwar Venezuela and in staving off chaos that could destabilize the region. Yet Trump is best suited to military operations that are quick and discrete, like the strikes on the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani or Iran’s nuclear sites, as they do not require sustained focus or resolve. He is most ill-suited, I think, to a regime-change war against a country with lucrative natural resources. I fear Trump will try to enrich himself, his family, or his allies, consistent with his lifelong pattern of self-interested behavior; I doubt he will be a fair-minded, trusted steward of Venezuelan oil. If he indulges in self-dealing, he could fuel anti-American resentment among Venezuelans and intensify opposition to any regime friendly to the United States and its interests.

Whether the outcome is ultimately good for Venezuelans, as I hope, or bad, Trump has betrayed Americans. He could have tried to persuade Congress or the public to give him permission to use force. He didn’t bother. He chose war despite polls that found a large majority of Americans opposed it. Perhaps, like me, they fear America is about to repeat the mistakes of its interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, where brutal regimes were ousted, then ruinous power vacuums followed.

This theme continues in the piece in Politico:

“Congress did not authorize this war,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) wrote on X. “Venezuela posed no imminent threat to the United States. This is reckless, elective regime change risking American lives (Iraq 2.0) with no plan for the day after. Wars cost more than trophies.”

“Maduro is an illegitimate ruler,” Himes wrote. “But I have seen no evidence that his presidency poses a threat that would justify military action without Congressional authorization, nor have I heard a strategy for the day after and how we will prevent Venezuela from descending into chaos.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced Saturday he would again force the chamber to vote on his effort to constrain Trump’s war powers next week.

“Where will this go next?” he wrote. “Will the President deploy our troops to protect Iranian protesters? To enforce the fragile ceasefire in Gaza? To battle terrorists in Nigeria? To seize Greenland or the Panama Canal? To suppress Americans peacefully assembling to protest his policies? Trump has threatened to do all this and more and sees no need to seek legal authorization from people’s elected legislature before putting servicemembers at risk.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a combat veteran who deployed to Iraq as an infantryman in 2005, wrote on X Saturday that “the American people did not ask for this.” And he wondered aloud about what comes next for the South American country, asking on X, “so who is in charge of Venezuela now?”

A December Quinnipiac poll found that Americans overwhelmingly oppose military action against Venezuela, with just 25 percent of respondents saying they supported an intervention inside the country. Even the White House’s strategy of targeting boats with alleged drug traffickers proved broadly unpopular.

“I fought in some of the hardest battles of the Iraq War,” Gallego wrote. “Saw my brothers die, saw civilians being caught in the crossfire all for an unjustified war. No matter the outcome we are in the wrong for starting this war in Venezuela.”

The sad reality is that the Felon sees himself as an absolute monarch - something that threatens every America.  He is a clear and present danger to the nation.