Some clear thinking about this weekend’s strike in Venezuela

by James Hickman via Schiff Sovereign 

It’s hard to imagine America being intimidated by a guy named “Little Turtle”.  And yet, in the year 1790, he was about as terrifying as it could get.

Little Turtle was the war chief of the Miami nation, one of the Algonquian-speaking tribes in the Great Lakes region, and he had made a name for himself fighting against the United States during the Revolutionary War.

(At one point he literally butchered his captives after a lopsided battle.)

More than a century before, Little Turtle’s people had waged a long war against the Iroquois over control of the land in what is today Indiana and western Ohio. So, when the American Revolution was over, he continued fighting against settlers that he felt were encroaching on his tribe’s territory.

Roughly 1500 American settlers were killed between 1784 and 1789. And when it finally became clear to the US government in 1790 that the violence would not stop, they sent an expedition under the command of General Josiah Harmar to fight the Miami.

Little Turtle was ready. And on October 21 at the Battle of Kekionga in northeastern Indiana, Little Turtle vanquished American forces.

In terms of casualty percentages, it was one of the worst defeats in US history. More importantly, given how small America’s military was at the time, the defeat became a national security nightmare. The US essentially didn’t have an Army after the battle.

In response, Congress passed a series of laws known as the “Militia Acts”, which, among other things, federalized state militias for use by the federal government.

But the new laws also gave the President sweeping authority to take command of these forces under certain circumstances, including invasion or threat of invasion “from any foreign nation or Indian tribe”.

Fast forward more than two centuries, and these Militia Acts are among the foundational legal arguments in favor of the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela over the weekend.

Now, tremendous amounts of ink have already been spilled over Venezuela in the past 48-hours.

What I found so interesting, however, is that most of the legacy media articles, not to mention social media commentary, devolved into typical ignorant tribalism, i.e. people are frequently for/against something based on whether or not they’re for/against the person doing it.

In this case, the Left is predictably howling that the President’s use of the military was illegal and unconstitutional– an assertion that is being repeated and reposted by millions of people.

These same people who protested against “no kings” are now raging in defense of a dictator. They imported millions of illegals and enabled billions in fraud in order to win votes, yet they’re upset because they think the military strike was against the law.

I find this fascinating, because the vast majority of Americans (including many who serve in Congress) have never once read the Constitution and wouldn’t know the difference between Article I and a hole in the ground.

Yet in their expert opinions they have deemed this “unconstitutional”. Just like the ICE raids, Presidential use of the national guard, etc.

Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to declare war. Yet “war” has never actually been defined. Do air strikes and Delta Force raids constitute war? If so, then nearly every military conflict waged in US history is illegal and unconstitutional.

Joe Biden struck Syria in 2021. Obama struck Libya in 2011. Bush junior interred suspected terrorists at Gitmo. Bill Clinton sent troops and dropped bombs all over the world. Bush senior invaded Panama. Reagan invaded Grenada. . .

This history goes back to the early days of the Republic.

Yet the Supreme Court has always stayed out of it because they view the definition of “war” in Article I as more of a political argument than a legal one. In other words, it should be up to the voters, not a panel of unelected judges.

So, does what happened this weekend constitute “war”, and hence fall under the exclusive authority of Congress?

Or does it fall under the sweeping powers provided to the President under Article II (as Commander-in-Chief), combined with numerous legislative acts ranging from the militia bills in the 1790s to the War Powers Resolution of 1973…?

Naturally these questions aren’t actually being debated. The legacy media simply devolves into “Orange Man Bad” without bothering to examine the facts or the actual merits of the decision.

And there’s plenty of merit. Many of our readers know that I predicted this a couple of years ago– that the US would essentially make Venezuela the 51st state in order to tap its vast oil reserves.

We’ll discuss this more later in the week, but given declining US shale production, oil supply is clearly a strategic benefit to the United States. So is toppling a global drug cartel.

At the moment there are a lot of people on the Left complaining that the world is now less stable, more dangerous, etc. as a result of this weekend’s military strike.

They said the same thing after the US airstrike in Iran several month ago– that the world would plunge into chaos and danger because of unilateral US aggression.

They were wrong. And I argued back then that the world was actually less inclined to war as a result of the Iran strikes. I believe the same to be true today.

As I explained months ago, the airstrikes against Iran pitted US military technology (F-35s) against Chinese military technology (air defense systems, etc.). And China got embarrassed.

This weekend, a joint force (i.e. Army, Navy, Air Force, etc.) destroyed high value targets in Venezuela while the most elite special operations forces in the world extracted a dictator, with minimal casualties, and it was all over in a couple of hours.

That’s an astonishing military achievement (not to mention the CIA’s success in providing the necessary intelligence).

Conducting any large-scale joint operation is REALLY hard to do. The sheer amount of interservice coordination, i.e. Navy fighter jets talking to Air Force bombers talking to the commandos on the ground– everyone being in sync, on schedule, and hitting their objectives with surgical precision– is extremely difficult.

Doing so in a heavily populated area adds an even higher degree of difficulty.

And yet the US military pulled this off almost flawlessly.

After several years of embarrassments for the military– from the withdrawal from Afghanistan to Joe Biden’s transgender admirals, to the lowering of physical fitness standards, to countless DEI initiatives– this weekend’s actions in Venezuela prove to the rest of the world that the US military is back.

After witnessing these precision strikes, there is not a leader in the world– not Xi, not Putin, not the second coming of Little Turtle– who would even think about conflict with America.