Trump has unilaterally declared war on Venezuela – attacking boats in the Caribbean, covert CIA activity, and he’s apparently “thinking” (I use the term advisedly) of sending in the military.
None of this has been with Congressional approval: no War Powers Act, no declaration of war. Doesn’t that make this illegal? Would any orders given by Trump to attack Venezuela be an illegal order, and the military would be bound to ignore it?
Should someone like Chuck Schumer make an address to the Joint Chiefs and the nation reminding them of this?
Thanks for starting this. I’ve been asking the same questions. I’ve heard a-hole say something like if there’s drugs on the boat, it’s fair game. Excuse me if I don’t buy it.
At this time, I would like to remind our military and other non-Trumpy leaders of the Roman statesman Cato, who stood firm against Julius Caesar as “Dictator for Life.” He led an army and fought a battle with Caesar and lost, but Caesar said if he surrendered he would be pardoned and personally forgiven. Rather than bow down to someone who was (as a Roman citizen) no more than his equal, Cato committed suicide very publicly and bloodily, actively resisting attempts to save his life, pulling his own guts out of his belly, all as protest against Caesar. There are those who say that Cato really was the winner, Caesar could not forget him for the (short) rest of his life.
Where is our Cato, our rock of principle, carved from granite and intransigent to the end? I don’t ask for personal exsanguination or hara-kiri, just someone who is willing to stand up and speak out, repeatedly and defiantly, at the risk of their federal job and/or elected office, or of any other personal loss that Trump might try to impose.
Declarations of war are basically an archaism these days. And the President does have authority to order the military into combat; they just have to consult with Congress about it.
And the War Powers act has been consistently ignored in the past, anyway. In fact part of the reason we are in our present mess is that Congress has ceded so much of its power to the President in the first place; they don’t really have the power to stop him from doing whatever he wants short of impeaching him. Which they won’t do.
But how would a Congressional majority (for the Ds) change what the OP is asking about? Does Congress have the ability to stop Trump from carrying out drone strikes or other strikes in Venezuelan waters or elsewhere? For better or worse, U.S. presidents seem to have had near-unfettered power to carry out small military operations as they please around the globe for the last 30-40 years. Seems like, as mentioned, only resistance within the military itself would work to stop it.
And if Congress passes a bill to limit Trump…..that bill would have to be signed into law by….Trump.
Probably the looking-tough optics. Centrists or liberals may oppose it, but to a big chunk of his supporting base, blowing up a Venezuelan boat claimed to be carrying crooks and narcotics will be just the thing.
I also think he – at least thinks (ie, rightly or wrongly) – that Tough On Crime – long, a GOP standard – gives him the opportunity to say that the Democrats are soft/weak on crime/drugs if they oppose even the least significant aspect of what he does or how he does it.
If you remember GW Bush and his pet wars, he squelched dissent fairly well with his “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” bullshit.
In his last meeting with Zelenskyy he learned that the Ukrainian constitution allows for the cancellation of elections when the country is at war. He seemed to think this was a pretty cool idea, and he’s just stupid enough to think that it may apply to the US.
So perhaps he’s aiming to have us at war in time to cancel the mid-terms.
Just…no. There is no legitimate reading of the history of the late Roman Republic which would support this interpretation.
As for illegal war, it’s kind of an American tradition going back to the American Revolution by people who were really concerned that ‘the Crown’ would grand the Colonies most of the autonomy they wanted without full self-determination, including most notably the continued trade of chattel slavery. The history of the United States is rife with forcible annexation, post-colonial political reassortment, fomenting revolt to support agricultural and industrial interests, manufacturing fraudulent evidence of weapons of mass destruction to justify invasion, conducting massive secret bombing campaigns, sending aid to ‘rebel’ groups funded by illegal arms sales to our sworn enemy and drugs being imported into US cities to cause an epidemic of crime, the neverending ‘Drone War’, or just invading a tiny Caribbean island to demonstrate the might of the American military. The only difference here is that Trump is doing this boastfully with a ruse so risible even Fox News has trouble repeating it.
There’s also Joe Walsh, a Republican who has committed career suicide by relentlessly speaking out against Trump. There is Will Stancil, a local Minneapolis politician who goads both left and right extremists so much that he seems likely to catch a bullet, but his passion and courage are inspiring. John Bolton and Jim Comey are about to eat shit, but to different degrees and for different reasons.
These people are out there. Their names don’t stick in your head because none of them is delivering the coup de grace. But they all matter. For what it’s worth, you can bet Trump isn’t forgetting any of them.