Vermont’s Air National Guard and F-35A fighter jets have arrived in Puerto Rico. They’ve been deployed as part of Operation Southern Spear — a build-up of U.S. forces in the region targeting Venezuela and the Maduro regime.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) joins us to weigh in on the deployment. He’s spoken out against President Donald Trump’s actions against Venezuela.
Stephon Boatwright, a St. Michael’s College professor of international relations and political science, shares his perspective on the legality of recent U.S. actions in the Caribbean. And Peter Ladensack, a former guardsman, explains what it’s like when a unit mobilizes. He has firsthand experience — he was deployed to Afghanistan with the Vermont Army National Guard.
The following transcript of our interview with Sen. Peter Welch has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Mikaela Lefrak: Why do you say the President needs congressional authorization to mobilize units like Vermont's?
Sen. Peter Welch: Well, it's the Constitution. The power to declare war is vested in Article One, and that's the legislative branch. And of course, we've strayed from that. Congress has given up too much authority to the executive. We saw that with Vietnam. We saw that with Iraq. We saw that with Afghanistan. And now you have a situation where the President is saying what he wants to do. He said he wants Maduro gone, explicitly, he said that, and he's taking actions that are consistent with the military approach to making that happen. We've got 15,000 military personnel in SOUTHCOM, 13 warships, including the USS, Gerald Ford and of course, our own Vermont Air National Guard has been deployed, and they're down in Puerto Rico, and that's the F-35s.
And by the way, I just want to pause and express my gratitude. And I think I speak for all Vermonters when I say we really appreciate those Vermonters who serve us in the Guard and have to respond to the call of the Commander-in-Chief, but every action that the President is taking is consistent with what he said he wants to accomplish with military force, and that is have Maduro gone. Regime change.
Lefrak: Do you agree with the President's motivations, if not with the way that he is going about this campaign?
Welch: Well, I agree that Maduro is a very, very bad leader, anti-democratic, oppressive to his people, and is a bad person. But the same was true with Saddam Hussein. The same was true with the Taliban, and what we've seen when the President — a president — takes unilateral action and has our military essentially be utilized to change a regime. It's easy to get rid of Saddam. That didn't take long. It was easy to get rid of the Taliban. That didn't take long, but all hell broke loose for a long time. I mean, those two wars alone, we lost over 10,000 of our own soldiers and our allied soldiers, and it cost several trillion dollars. So there's an enormous amount of of overreach that you're seeing among our executives.
President Trump right now appears to be making the mistake that he criticized other presidents for doing with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan. So I strongly oppose this, and absolutely oppose it without the president coming to Congress and making his case. His case to us in Congress is really his case to the American people. You know, those of us who are there are elected to represent us and on this extraordinarily important question of having our young men and women be in harm's way. The President has an obligation to make that case to America by coming to Congress.
Lefrak: So if he did — if he came to Congress, made that case — can you see yourself supporting these types of actions?
Welch: Absolutely not. Going to war about this, as opposed to using other means, is a knee jerk reaction on the part of this President, where he thinks military force is the answer for everything.
Lefrak: He did start with sanctions back in 2019. I don't know if it's — can we call it knee jerk if the U.S. has been combating the Maduro regime for years now?
Welch: Well, maybe knee jerk is the wrong word, but it is a profoundly important question to go from sanctions, which I do support, by the way, strongly, to a military occupation, a military invasion, use of military force to achieve a goal of regime change. In fact, patient use of sanctions, getting alliances, getting our allies to work with us on that, something that he doesn't do, the knee jerk part of this is what's going on right now. And you're seeing that with Secretary of War — it's now called — Pete Hegseth, who is got a kind of macho approach to the use of the military in that there is an absence of any kind of restraint or long-term agenda-setting by this President. So I strongly oppose going to war in Venezuela.
Lefrak: President Trump and Peter Hegseth are scheduled to make an announcement this afternoon in Florida. Do you have any sense of what they're going to be discussing there?
Welch: I do not.
Lefrak: Peter Hegseth ordered a follow-on attack to kill survivors of a boat strike in September. Other lawmakers have alleged that this could constitute a war crime. Do you agree with that?
Welch: Most legal experts believe it is there is a requirement that if there is a person who was in combat, let's say, which was not even the case here, but they're disabled, then they can't be killed. They, in fact, have to be rescued and taken prisoner. And by the way, the President said he was going to release that video. You know, there's two things — that they're holding on that video of the follow-on strike they promised they would release. Hegseth now says that there is national security reasons he won't. It would reveal operational methods. In fact, he was releasing all the videos with great glee as those previous strikes occurred. So that's a pretty bogus explanation.
The second thing is that the President has a legal opinion that those of us in Congress have been allowed to see, but on a classified basis. I read it. My view it's pretty sketchy and not at all persuasive. But my view is that that opinion should be made public. If the President is making the case of using military force, be open about what he claims is the basis of his authority. So I'd like to see that opinion made public, so not just me, but all citizens can see it. And I'd like to see that video so all Americans can make their own judgment.
Lefrak: Well, as we have this conversation, Senator Welch, Vermont's Air National Guard is in Puerto Rico with the F-35A fighter jets that they fly. What details do you know about their deployment? Have you been told how long they'll be gone? What exactly their mission is? Any other details like that?
Welch: I don't, and you know, in many ways I shouldn't. I should know about the policy that's being pursued, and the President should have to come to Congress and explain to those of us who serve, what the basis is. But when you get into the operational details, anything that is going to be disclosed would obviously come from the military side. General Knight has issued a memo and sent a letter to the legislature and shared that with us, but he makes it very clear that the Vermont Air Guard that has been deployed is under the total command of the US military and the president, and even he is not — whatever operational details he knows he's not allowed to disclose.
Lefrak: I want to share a statement that we got ahead of today's show from Major General Gregory Knight, who's the Adjutant General of the Vermont Air Guard. He says, "We thank you for understanding and respecting the limitations we face regarding the release of information about this activation. Currently we cannot discuss operational details, including departure timelines, destination or deployment duration. This restraint is not due to secrecy for its own sake. It is deliberate and responsible measure to protect the safety of our members and the integrity of the mission. We will provide more information when we are able."
[Welch answers questions from two callers here.]
Lefrak: You've pressed Congress in the past couple weeks to pass new legislation that would prohibit unauthorized use of US Armed Forces in these Venezuelan hostilities. Could you explain that approach to us a bit more? Does an action like that have any precedent in Congress?
Welch: Well, it has some precedent with Vietnam, when we were getting out. But here's the situation we have in Congress. There has been too much of a delegation by the Congress of its authority to the President. It's now clear that under the Constitution we should be the ones that are declaring war, and the President, under the War Powers Act, has to come to us. My legislation is about reminding my colleagues that we have an obligation here. We have authority, we have responsibility, and we don't have to just stick our head in the sand and look the other way, as the President has this massive military buildup in the Caribbean, all about getting rid of Maduro. So we've seen in so many areas during the Trump administration that basically my Republican colleagues won't stand up and assert our taxing authority and defer to the President on these tariffs that are so bad that we're allowing the President to weaponize the Justice Department, something no other president has done to the scale that we've seen here. So Congress is failing to assert its own responsibility and authority under the Constitution, and this legislation is a reminder — folks, this is our job, and let's not just complain about the President. Let's do something.
Broadcast live on Monday, Dec. 22, 2024, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
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