“A republic is the best form of government, a government of laws, not arbitrary rule.
John Adams
In the aftermath of our country’s usurpation of the sovereignty of the Venezuelan independent state, it is time to remember John Adams’s above quote. The MAGA defenders of the invasion of Venezuela certainly have forgotten it, if they ever read it.
Those defenders repeatedly assert that the Venezuelan invasion was justified because it worked, because it removed a horrible person from control of the country. It’s hard to argue with part of that. It did work. Maduro is an animal. The power of a corrupt dictator was taken away. He ruled in the worst way, by doing whatever he wanted, regardless of the law. He made up his own rules. But that doesn’t justify what was done. By doing it, our President, Orange Julius (“O.J.”), engaged in precisely the type of conduct that he says justified the invasion.
Did not O.J. order this overthrow simply because he wanted to, regardless of the law? There is no legal justification for it, and don’t just go by me. It’s the view of many experts in international law. As just one example, Geoffrey Robertson, the former President of the UN war crimes court, has said, “The reality is that America is in breach of the United Nations charter. It has committed the crime of aggression, which the court in Nuremberg described as the supreme crime, it’s the worst of all.”
So even if the actions in Venezuela accomplished a good result, that is not the only measure by which a governmental action should be judged. If winning is your goal, it is much easier to win by cheating. The Astros won the World Series by stealing signs. Did they do the right thing? If a government wants to reduce crime, do they do the right thing by ignoring the Bill of Rights, by barging into anybody’s home without a warrant, and by imprisoning people without a trial? Those policies would certainly achieve the laudable goal of reducing crime, but at what cost? We’d be living in a country with much less crime but also much less freedom.
Just as being constrained by the law makes our country a better place, being constrained by international law makes the world a better place. When one country takes it upon itself to violate the law against another, it tears the fabric of protection that prevents all countries from doing the same thing. If O.J. can justify this illegal invasion of Venezuela because it displaced a leader he didn’t like, what prevents Putin from using that justification for his illegal invasion of Ukraine, or maybe at some future time, an invasion of us?
In the movie, “A Man for All Seasons,” Sir Thomas More responds to another character, Roper, when Roper claims that it would be right to cut down every law in England to go after the Devil. More says:
“And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ‘round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
The MAGA crowd should watch that movie.
We were right 