Their army is been filled with yesmen at officer rank levels and up.

Their army also doesn’t give a fuck about law unless they can exploit it for their benefit.

They are also the biggest bully, they simply can do it.

So yes, Congress (the Legislative branch of the US government) authorises war in the United States, but a couple factors are also in play. One, all three parties (also the Executive, i.e. the president; and the Judicial, the Supreme Court) are all in the president’s party, which means they all keep each other’s secrets and whatnot (e.g. Epstein Island but there are others). They all kind of have an unspoken pact protecting each other from mutually assured destruction. It’s almost like loyalty but based on implied blackmail. Two, the president (not just this one, any American president) is considered the Commander in Chief, which is a civilian position but it does hold rank and authority above anyone else in the military (sometimes referred to as a five or six star general, or General of the Armies, or something like that). General disposition of the average soldier who does not lean politically toward the president or outright does not like him is along the lines of “I do not like the man but I respect the rank” and so they will do what he says.

It’s also not direct from the president. The president did not go to all the barracks and rouse the soldiers. The decision would have been made in council with the Joint Chiefs who would pass the orders down through the chain of command.

(I watched a lot of shows like 24 and The West Wing, and read Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books. Not the ones people wrote in his name after he died, just to be clear. But, most of that stuff tends to be pretty accurate, minus a couple key details where national security comes before accuracy.)

You’re assuming that the whole Congress is the only branch that can declare war is actually taken at all seriously and that it’s not a complete fantasyland charade.

The US will go to war whenever and with whomever it wants and there’s nothing Congress or you can do about it.

Not saying what they did was right, just listing reasons. They will have to answer for their own actions.

The president, as commander in chief,

The president also may deploy troops for special operations.

Looking at Viet Nam and other smaller conflicts, there is precedent for obeying. IANAL and cannot describe whether Congress will also seek punishment for what is happening.

From my understanding, the military officers and personnel involved would have to disregard the order, then be arrested and court marshaled to determine if they did in fact disobey a legal order. The depressing part is someone out there will always step up.

ABC has an article about illegal orders that explains it better than I can summarize.

Since there is precedent for the president to order troops to action, I think the illegal orders charges won’t stick for this deployment based on what I have heard.

Not all military actions require Congressional approval.

Going to Congress takes some time, and so you don’t always have that time.

I don’t think that case law has precisely hammered out the division at the level of the US Constitution, but in legal terms, a major element is the War Powers Resolution:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution

The War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973 or the War Powers Act) (50 U.S.C. ch. 33) is a federal law intended to check the U.S. president’s power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. The resolution was adopted in the form of a United States congressional joint resolution. It provides that the president can send the U.S. Armed Forces into action abroad only by Congress’s “statutory authorization”, or in case of “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces”.

The bill was introduced by Clement Zablocki, a Democratic congressman representing Wisconsin’s 4th district. The bill had bipartisan support and was co-sponsored by a number of U.S. military veterans.[1] The War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States. The resolution was passed by two-thirds each of the House and Senate, overriding the veto of President Richard Nixon.

In practice, the US has not declared war since World War II, though it has engaged in many military conflicts since then. What has happened, for major conflicts, is that Congress has passed some form of military authorization permitting continued combat operations in line with the above act.

In part, I believe it was the practical pressures of the nuclear weapons era that gave the President more freedom to act. There would be no time to obtain approval from Congress in a number of nuclear weapons scenarios, and if you let the Executive make use of the nuclear arsenal — a really big stick — without Congress’s approval, it seems a bit odd to restrict use of conventional force.

I also suspect that one factor is that war is also politically risky; if it becomes unpopular, a Congressman — who may be around for a lot longer than a President, who will be out after two terms — may not want to have a declaration of that unpopular war on his record, and would prefer to minimize involvement, so Congress is generally not, for political reasons, adverse to reducing its exposure.

The issue here is that there’s a certain assumption in that legislation that the freedom given the President is because he requires a great deal of leeway to respond rapidly to unexpected dangers.

In this case, that wasn’t the case, though I suspect one could make a fair argument that an operation of the sort taken required operational secrecy, and Congressional debate would be at serious odds with it.

I think that it’s fair to say that the US has taken the position some time before now that ejecting Maduro is okay and a goal — that’s why Venezuela has been under the sanctions, for example, to create political pressure. That hasn’t worked. The question is really whether that policy can or should be shifted from economic pressure to military force.

Some of those in Armed Forces are the same that burn crosses

-Zack De La Rocha, Rage Against the Machine

Decades of manufacturing consent, propergandising against workers power. We live in a hyper individualist society where the state can feel monolithic and we can’t fight it alone, furthered by not knowing how to collectivise. This can however change, when capitalistic crisis deepens so does class antagonism. Capitalism can not solve its own inherent failures.

The US’s imperialist invasion of oil rich Venezuela will lift many out of poverty in imperialistic countries, however this will be a dirty bandage on a septic wound, and while in the short turn it will lift some up, it will also push a vaster number down in the client states.

What we need is a revolutionary working class. No more flimsy concessions, careerists, or ruling elites. This necessitates developing class consciousness with in the mass of our society.

So get studying Marx, join a revolutionary socialists/communist party. Get involved in local actions. Essentially become a leading comrade.

The president is generally given more space when it comes to military operations.

A lot of laws were drafted in the time when a special military operation was a year of logistics to make sure your soldiers could even march to a target.

There’s enough grey area that Congress could step in at any time if they want to, but typically won’t. Easier to let the commander take the blame if it goes wrong.

The military will not be exposed to war crimes. First off, the exposure is only on the officer corps. Second, it’s still in the grey area of “we’ve done quick operations before with nothing happening to us”.

It’s one of those “is it illegal if nobody is punished?” situations. And Congress would be the one doing the punishing, being the most powerful branch.

I don’t think this was illegal under US law. Congress gave the president the power to unilaterally deploy the military pretty much anywhere during george bush’s war in Iraq. Congress has to review the deployment afterwards and can stop it from continuing. Congress gave bush, and every subsequent president the power to do exactly what happened.

The US doesn’t do formal declarations of war anymore. WWII was the last time that happened. Congress authorized military operations without formal declarations many times since. Presidents to this day have been continuing to use the 2001 antiterrorism authorization to strike wherever they want. Obama and Biden did it too, they just didn’t do anything as brazen as kidnapping a president.

The military planned the strikes. You can’t kidnap a head of state in a single evening without a laying a lot of groundwork. The US has a history of backing coups in South America, and they’ve been building a case for war against Venezuela for over a decade. This was within standard practice for the US military.

This, and most of trumps other actions should be illegal. But those who made and enforced the laws since the start of the millennium have all been collaborators.