In the 48 hours
since Operation Absolute Resolve, there’s been a lot of nonsense spouted by the
typical MAGA non-thinkers, and even by well-meaning centrists, up to and
including Gov. Jared Polis, who want to cheer over Nicolas Maduro’s downfall. It’s
time to lay out the specifics of the things that made the Maduro nab wrong in
intent and in deed.
First, the number
of U.S. citizens who actually like Maduro can be numbered in dozens, mostly coming
from odd lefist sects. Hugo Chavez may have had a cheering session back in the
day, but Maduro entered office with an incompetence that drove the economy into
the dirt, and drove many Venezuelans to seek lives elsewhere. Particularly after
the outrageous election fraud in Venezuela last year, even many of Maduro’s
supporters wanted him to somehow go through heavy-handed negotiations, to be replaced
by Nobel winner Maria Corina Machado, or last year’s presidential candidate
Edmundo Gonzalez. Trump scotched that plan January 3 when he threw his weight
behind Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez (could it have been partial
envy over Machado winning the Nobel?).
MAGA cheerleaders
assume anyone raising questions about the midnight stab-n-grab must be people
suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. But there were many wrong aspects of
this that were uniquely Trumpian. Every major foreign-policy or economic action
carried out by Trump in either term (particularly the second) has been accomplished
in a Mafia-don-like attitude of thuggish brutality, self-aggrandizement, and an
unspoken dare for anyone to contradict him Even apparent “wins” like the Gaza
peace accord have been tarnished by the desire to make money and attach
personal tags to the program. These characteristics were all in force in
Caracas.
In previous
decades, CIA coups would be carried out with cash dispersed from intelligence
agencies, and changes in leadership announced three or four days after the
fact. Donald Trump is only interested in covert action as a support activity –
CIA in port drone attacks, Delta Force in the actual seizing of Maduro and his
wife. Trump made a special effort to parade Maduro in a public perp-walk so he
could say, “See, Colombia? See, Nicaragua? See, Iran? You could be next.” These
are the factors unique to Trump as a person.
Trump will run
into steep challenges when he says we “run the country now.” He can’t simply
hand over the oil refineries and drilling platforms to Chevron and say “Here’s
the keys to the car. Be sure to give me a slice of the profits.” The oil
companies have daunting challenges. He already has admitted a fairly large contingent
of U.S. troops will have to stay in Venezuela – and we did not have boots on
the ground there before. He pledged his fealty to the Venezuelan political
opposition for a year, but suddenly switched to supporting Maduro’s vice
president, Delcy Rodriguez. This will not make our nation friends.
But peace
activists have to confront another level of bad behavior that may be a tougher
principle for many to grasp. Far too many Americans are wholehearted believers
in operationalism – “If it works, it is good by definition.” This is a skewed
view of what is right. The primary metric for a president’s action should be
whether it complies with domestic and international law. The second metric
(sure to be highly contested) is whether the act is moral. Then, and only then,
can we ask whether it achieved its stated goals.
Congress enacted
the War Powers Act during the Nixon administration to put guardrails around a
president’s ability to independently take war-like actions. Every president
since then has violated some element of the act. The only one with a slight
hint of credibility was Obama’s efforts to kill Osama bin Laden, since bin
Laden was an international terrorist with proven blood on his hands. The
condition peace activists place on executive power, which is hard for many to
grasp, is that we don’t want to see forward-based aggressive action or
individual acts of assassination by the executive branch without a legislative
and judicial review. We would expect other large powers with forward-based
armies to act with the same limitations. Many Americans might say, “Don’t you
want the U.S. to win something?” Not in the quasi-legal way that is suggested
in Venezuela.
There is nothing
new here in American policy. In the mid-19th century, some historians
thought James Knox Polk should have been ranked a far worse president than common
perceptions grant him. He came into office and said what he would do, he did
it, and he left after a single term. The problem was, the American people
wanted him to invade Mexico to take land, and he wanted the same. When both the
president and the people want something that doesn’t pass tests for legality or
morality, who is to blame?
In the beginning
of the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt won many cries of “Bully, bully!”
for taking aggressive tactics in the Spanish-American War. He was famous for
saying, “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” and was chided by many historians
for using that stick inappropriately. Donald Trump now practices the equivalent
of “Speak loudly and swing your stick around and hit people!” His methods lose
us both friends and foes, allies and adversaries. Presidents who use more hard
power than soft power have always been a problem, but presidents who recognize
only hard power are on a suicidal trip to oblivion, even as many in the
populace cry “Bully, bully!” Trump is a bully, all right. And more actions like
Venezuela are bound to make our nation collapse not too soon after our 250th
birthday.
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