La desesperanza es el enemigo de la justicia.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie invokes the Founding Fathers to HAMMER Trump for violating the Constitution and creating an Iraq-level quagmire in our own backyard with his insane kidnapping of Maduro!
Speaking on the House floor during debate over a War Powers resolution, Rep. Massie excoriated Trump for lying to the American people like George Bush did and setting the stage for disaster:
“James Madison warned us that in no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature and not the executive. Madison called it the crown jewel of Congress. The framers understood a simple truth.”
“To the extent that war-making power devolves to one person, liberty dissolves. If the president believes military action against Venezuela is justified and needed, he should make the case and Congress should vote before American lives and treasure are spent on regime change in South America. Let’s be honest about likely outcomes.”
Do we truly believe that Nicolas Maduro will be replaced by a modern-day George “Washington? How did that work out in Cuba, Libya, Iraq or Syria? […Viet Nam, Iran, Somalia, Chile, Afghanistan…?] Previous presidents told us to go to war over WMDs, weapons of mass destruction, that did not exist. Now it’s the same playbook except we’re told that drugs are the WMDs. If it were about drugs, we’d bomb Mexico or China or Colombia and the president would not have pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez.”
“This is about oil and regime change and when it comes to regime change, we’ve already been down this road with Venezuela with nothing to show for it. In 2019, we recognized Juan Guaido. We seized their embassy here in DC.”
“We were told that regime change was imminent. Years later, Maduro remain[ed] in power. Today, we’re told to place our hopes in other exiled figures.”
“Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Carina Machado. I wish them well, I do. But Congress should not express moral sympathy in the form of a blank check for military escalation and American lives.”
“And let’s take a moment to acknowledge the contradiction at the heart of this policy. This administration tells us that the Maduro regime is made up of narco terrorists and by escalating toward war, we would predictably create countless refugees. […or civil wat.] At the same time, this administration has moved to end temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and deports them back to the very regime it condemns.”
“So which is it? Are we prepared to receive swarms of the 25 million Venezuelans who will likely become refugees and billions in American treasure that will be used to destroy and inevitably rebuild that nation? Do we want a miniature Afghanistan in the Western Hemisphere?”
“If that cost is acceptable to this Congress, then we should vote on it as a voice of the people and in accordance with our Constitution. And yet today, here we aren’t even voting on whether to declare war or authorize the use of military force. All we’re voting on is a War Powers Resolution that strengthens the fabric of our republic by reasserting the plain and simple language in the Constitution that Congress must decide questions of war.”
It is truly pathetic to see how eagerly the Republicans in Congress have ceded their authority to their god-king Donald Trump. The hypocrisy of the Trump regime is as outrageous as their disrespect for the rule of law and our Constitution, and Congress needs to take swift action to punish Trump and his cronies.
