The United States Kidnapped The President of Venezuela

 No other way to put what I woke to at 9 AM today. And I am not the only one calling it a kidnapping, albeit Corbin Trent does more than state the obvious in We Bombed a Country, Took Its President, and the Corporate Media Calls It ‘Capture' (Common Dreams):

Capture is what happens when you execute an arrest warrant. Capture is what happens when there’s an ICC indictment. Capture is what happens when the UN Security Council authorizes military action. Capture is what happens when Congress declares war.

None of those things happened here.

The word is kidnapping.

I’ve been writing about executive power. About how Congress abdicated its war-making authority decades ago. About how presidents from both parties have consolidated power while everyone looked the other way because the bombs were falling on someone else.

Last week I wrote about how the tools Trump is using to reshape the executive branch aren’t inherently authoritarian—they’re just tools. The problem is who’s wielding them and what they’re being used for. I stand by that.

But here’s the thing about tools: they can be used to build a house or burn one down. And what happened in Caracas this morning isn’t building anything. It’s the United States government deciding, unilaterally, that it has the authority to bomb a country, kill its citizens, and abduct its leader because we say he’s a drug dealer.

We say. Not the International Criminal Court. Not the UN. Not even Congress. Marco Rubio looked senators in the eye weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change. He lied. They knew he was lying. And the media is busy debating whether this was “constitutional” under some tortured reading of Article II instead of stating the obvious:

This is an act of war conducted without declaration. This is a kidnapping dressed up as law enforcement. And if any other country on earth did this to us, we would call it what it is.

 Congress gets to decide when the people of this country die because the people elect them. The public interest is protected by the legislative branch.

The President is not elected by the people, but by the Electoral College.

Donald J. Trump acts only in his own self-interest.

The United States Supreme Court has shielded him from responsibility for his crimes.

I was all against impeaching Trump, but this is changing my mind. The more he opens his mouth, the more I think he had to go. 

Donald J. Trump shows again he is the antithesis of Dale Carnegie. Does America First mean that we're the first to pushed off of Trump's plank?

‘This Is State Terrorism’: Global Outrage as Trump Launches Illegal Assault on Venezuela Evo Morales writes on Common Dreams:

Latin American leaders portrayed the assault as a continuation of the long, bloody history of US intervention in the region, which has included vicious military coups and material support for genocidal right-wing forces.

***

The presidents of Chile and Mexico similarly condemned the assault as a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty and international law.

“Based on its foreign policy principles and pacifist vocation, Mexico urgently calls for respect for international law, as well as the principles and purposes of the UN Charter, and to cease any act of aggression against the Venezuelan government and people,” the Mexican government said in a statement. “Latin America and the Caribbean is a zone of peace, built on mutual respect, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and the prohibition of the use and threat of force, and therefore any military action puts regional stability at serious risk.”

One Latin American leader, far-right Argentine president and Trump ally Javier Milei, openly celebrated the alleged US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, declaring on social media, “FREEDOM ADVANCES.”

Leaders and lawmakers in Europe also reacted to the US bombings. Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister of Spain, issued a cautious statement calling for “deescalation and responsibility.”

British MP Zarah Sultana was far more forceful, writing on social media that “Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves—and that’s no coincidence.”

“This is naked US imperialism: an illegal assault on Caracas aimed at overthrowing a sovereign government and plundering its resources,” Sultana added.

 And for bogus (Venezuela is not a source for fentanyl) and even more bogus reasons!

 Trump says Venezuela stole U.S. oil, land and assets. Here’s the history. (Washington Post) 

Vance was echoing points long expressed by Trump, who said late last year that the expropriation of U.S. oil company assets justified a “total and complete blockade” of oil tankers arriving and leaving Venezuela in defiance of U.S. sanctions. The blockade would remain, he wrote on Truth Social, until the South American nation returns “to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”

“They’re not going to do that again,” Trump told reporters. “We had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”

But U.S. companies never owned oil or land in Venezuela, home to the world’s largest proven reserves of crude, and officials didn’t kick them out of the country.

 ‘We Are Going to Run the Country,’ Trump Says of Venezuela After Maduro Abduction (Common Dreams) brings two thoughts to mind:

1.  He's going to ruin another country?
2. What are the Venezuelans going to say about this?

 “We are going to run the country,” Trump said during a press conference at his Florida resort, flanked by top US officials. Asked to elaborate, Trump said his administration is in the process of “designating various people” to run the government, adding that “we’re not afraid of boots on the ground.”

The president went on to say that US forces are prepared to launch “a much larger attack” on Venezuela if he deems it necessary, threatening other political figures in the country.

“What happened to Maduro can happen to them,” he said.

Trump also declared that American fossil fuel companies will “go in and spend billions of dollars” in Venezuela, which has the largest known oil reserves in the world.

U.S. captures Venezuelan President Maduro in 'large scale strike,' Trump says: Live updates (Yahoo News)

Venezuela’s government accused the U.S. of attacking civilian and military targets, called the operation an “imperialist attack” and demanded proof of life for Maduro and Flores.

The legality of the U.S. operation was immediately questioned by Democrats. Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had seen no evidence justifying military action without approval from Congress and warned of the risk of instability in Venezuela.

"I have seen no evidence that [Maduro's] 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,” Himes said in a statement.

Congress has bent over too long to the Presidency on military matters, but this taking of Maduro is war. If Congress continues to spread its collective ass cheeks, we will have what the Founding Fathers never had: a Chief Executive with the power to make war at will.

After Venezuela Assault, Trump and Rubio Warn Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia Could Be Next  

In his unwieldy remarks, Trump called out Colombian President Gustavo Petro by name, accusing him without evidence of “making cocaine and sending it to the United States.”

“So he does have to watch his ass,” the US president said of Petro, who condemned the Trump administration’s Saturday attack on Venezuela as “aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and Latin America.”

Petro responded defiantly to the possibility of the US targeting him, writing on social media that he is “not worried at all.”

In a Fox News appearance earlier Saturday, Trump also took aim at the United States’ southern neighbor, declaring ominously that “something’s going to have to be done with Mexico,” which also denounced the attack on Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro.

“She is very frightened of the cartels,” Trump said of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. “So we have to do something.”

Rubio, for his part, focused on Cuba—a country whose government he has long sought to topple.

“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned, at least a little bit,” Rubio, who was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents, said during Saturday’s press conference.

 I wrote a book on the politics of war powers, and Trump’s attack on Venezuela reflects Congress surrendering its decision-making powers (The Conversation)

So there may be an institutional role for Congress, a constitutional role, a role that has been confirmed by legal opinion, but politics takes over in Congress when it comes to asserting its power in this realm?

That’s a perfect way of putting it. They have a legal, constitutional, one might even say moral, responsibility to assert themselves as a branch, right? This is from Federalist 51 where James Madison says “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” So it should be that as a branch, they assert themselves against the president and say, “We have a role here.”

In the 1940s, presidential scholar Edward Corwin said that in the realm of foreign policy, it is an invitation for Congress and the president to struggle. So it should be that Congress and the president are struggling against each other to assert, “I’m in charge.” “No, I’m in charge.” “No, I’m in charge,” in an effort to create a balance between the two branches and between the two things that each of the branches does well. What you want from Congress is slow deliberation and a variety of opinions. What you want from the president is energy and dispatch.

So certainly, if we have an attack like 9/11, you would want the president to be able to act quickly. And you know, conversely, in situations like the questions around what the U.S. is doing in Venezuela, you want slow deliberation because there is no emergency that requires energy and dispatch and speed. So the president shouldn’t be entirely in the driver’s seat here, and Congress should very much be trying very hard to restrain him. 

And if Congress will not do their job: Trump should not just be impeached—he must be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court! 

At this point, Democrats in Congress need to do more than just move to impeach Trump. They should be calling for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Trump for his crimes. And while it’s true that the US is not a member of the ICC, the court still has jurisdiction over a citizen of a non-member country who commits war crimes on the territory of an ICC member country. Venezuela is a member nation of the ICC meaning Trump can be charged for war crimes, crimes against humanity or other crimes he commits on the soil of Venezuela.

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