Interestingly, this is not just flaunting international law. It is a blatant violation of federal domestic law in the USA itself: Congress is the only body that can declare war, and they have not done so. The Presidency has no right whatsoever to attack a foreign country without a declaration of war.
While yes, Congress authorized the "War on Terror", there is very obviously no possible justification for applying that to the case of Venezuela.
My point is that —- regardless of appropriateness —- this is about as far from “unprecedented” as can be imagined.
Congress didn’t declare ware on Syria, or Iraq, or Yemen, or Somalia, or any number of other African countries when the US attacked them during the Biden administration.
That’s not what I was saying, but I didn’t argue when smarter men than I said exactly that:
But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.
- Lysander Spooner
Liberia has/had a nearly identical constitution and look at them. It was just a roadmap for what the US could become if we became even more savage like them. It was never the Constitution that made the USA special, in other hands you got what we're getting now.
You always needed a populace that respected life, liberty, and property above all in order to have a prayer of it working out; that is long gone if it ever existed.
Ah yes, using the Coast Guard's aircraft carrier, stealth fighters, and their famous "Delta Force" commandos. I bet they even got a warrant to kick in Maduro's door and read him his rights!
While yes, Congress authorized the "War on Terror", there is very obviously no possible justification for applying that to the case of Venezuela.