This interview aired on the “Grass is Greener” show on WXRW (Milwaukee, WI) on December 2, 2025.
Here is a machine-generated transcript of the interview:
Gary 00:20
Hi. Okay, this is the grass is greener on WXR, w1, oh, 4.1 FM, in Milwaukee, I am the host of the program Gary grass. With me is my co host, Babette.
Babette 00:37
Hi, and with us today, we have James Branum. He’s with the military law task force of the National Lawyers Guild, and we had asked him here because we had seen a press release that they had sent out about the US military threats to Venezuela.
Gary 00:58
Yeah, so first of all, why don’t you give us a, sort of, just an update of what’s going on in the Caribbean right now?
James Branum 01:07
Well, we’re one of the challenging things is we have limited information about what’s happening in the Caribbean. The administration is sending a lot of conflicting messages, but it appears that there is a massive military buildup. A lot of it seems to be happening in Trinidad and Tobago, which is a small island nation about seven miles off the coast of Venezuela. Which is especially deeply troubling given the US is history of intervening and interfering with Caribbean affairs. This is really disturbing to begin with, just just the use of Trinidad and Tobago in this kind of way. But then potentially, this level of this, this buildup, appears that we’re gearing up for potential invasion.
James Branum 01:53
Again, the administration keeps sending conflicting messages about this, but as far as what we’re what we know of what’s happening on the ground, what’s happening as far as the naval forces that are being being mustered into that area, it certainly appears that we are on the verge, verge of a potential war.
Gary 02:11
Okay, so I guess one thing to say really quickly is, I mean, I suppose someone out there could be thinking, Yeah, I think, you know this, this whole huge build up in this whole huge presence, could be a bluff. It could just be to send a really strong show of force to Venezuela and, like, really, you know, terrify them into making concessions, right? Yeah. I mean, and
James Branum 02:43
that’s certainly possible, certainly possible. I think what to me maybe argues against that being the sole motivation is also the fact the US is currently engaged in attacks on vessels traveling through the Caribbean as well as in the eastern Pacific. The argument being that these vessels are somehow connected to cartels that they use drugs being smuggled on these vessels. There have been some pretty good reports saying that if these vessels are smuggling drugs, and that’s a big question mark, we’re trusting the US government to tell us what’s going on in most cases. But there has been some reporting that said that actually much of these drugs is actually aimed at Europe, most especially for the cocaine that’s being moved the it just for a lot of reasons, primarily based on the sales prices the the cartels are moving, moving drugs to Europe right now and then these vessels, if they were Doing that, they’re not even aimed at the US. So that’s anyway, because the fact the US is actually actively shooting down vessels as as we speak, we I think the latest report I’ve seen is 21 vessels today. Oh my goodness, yeah, and especially when we’re dealing with situations where we’re effectively dealing with extra judicial executions at sea. You know that vessels being attacked, people being killed, and there’s no trial, there’s no evidence being presented. You get, we get, you know, these pictures sometimes of vessels being targeted, but there’s no evidence being presented actually show that there’s actually drugs on board to begin with, but also beyond that, even if there were, this is not the way law enforcement activities happen on the high seas. You don’t just go blasting away at boats willy nilly like this. Yeah.
Gary 04:34
I mean, they certainly don’t see this in American cities where they say, you know, I think that person may be selling drugs. Can you send in an airstrike and blow up their house, please? I mean, it’s just, it’s, that’s not the way things get done. And there’s, there’s plenty of reasons why that’s not the way things get done, absolutely.
James Branum 04:55
And then when you, when you think about all the jurisdictional issues in the Caribbean where you have. On so many of these of the islands of the Caribbean are either a close cultural ties to European powers or actually still colonies of European powers. We have. There’s so many overlapping issues here that for the US to be engaged in this kind of reckless war activities is there’s so many potentials of unintended consequences, and to say nothing of the situation itself. In Venezuela itself, this is go ahead
Babette 05:32
international potentially, international law, crime for the US to be doing that in international waters, to be attacking these boats, who could be fishing boats, who could be trading things between the islands, or, like you said, going to, you know, places,
Gary 05:58
yeah, I mean, I’ve heard fishing boats. I’ve heard, you know, transporting, like, illegal guest workers from one country to another. A lot of it, like, even, even if it was, even if we’re drugs, a lot of it just does not involving the US at all, right? And it’s, and it’s all very mysterious, because they blow up all the evidence and leave it at the bottom of the ocean, or say It’s classified. So there’s there. We have no idea what a lot of this is. But, I mean, we do, I mean, we do know that nationals of lots of different countries have gotten killed in this. In fact, you know, you know, it’s, it’s kind of astonishing that we have this big build up in in Trinidad and Tobago when you know at least one Trinidadian as two Trinidadians now have been killed in these attacks. Oh, wow. But the President of the of Trinidad and Tobago is a very close ally with the US. Was like dodging all the reporters right now because doesn’t want to have to face up to why we’re why we’re helping a country that just murdered a couple of our citizens.
James Branum 07:06
No, it’s madness. It’s absolute madness.
Gary 07:10
Have these? Have these strikes been carried out actually in international waters? Because, I mean, I can, there’s all sorts of these, like maritime boundaries in the Caribbean, and there’s, there’s places where there’s actually disputes over who owns a piece of ocean. Or, you know, it’s like, you know, there’s islands that are claimed, you know, variously by different countries. This is Nicaragua has a claim, and this country has a claim. I mean, it’s,
James Branum 07:34
Oh, of course. And nesting, we’re not getting accurate reporting on what’s happening when they’re not reporting. We intercepted a vessel at these coordinates and we engaged them in this way. We’re not getting that kind of detail. Instead, we’re getting after the fact stuff, not spelling even very specific at all. I mean, the best we’re getting so far is it’s happening in the Caribbean or it’s happening in the eastern Pacific. We’re not even get being given accurate descriptions of where these events are happening, and that’s why, again, many of the countries that have interest in the Caribbean now are cutting the US off of intelligence gathering the British have, and I think some of the other European powers will as well. And again, for the US, it also raises, even increases, the chance that there could be innocence being targeted, because that intelligence is what when the US says, We think these people are carrying drugs, well, where do we get the information that those vessels are carrying drugs? We often are getting that information from other places. Those boats have passed other, other places that they have may have docked all of those things leading. In other words, if we not if, because we’re engaged in these transactions, we’re now being the US has been cut off of the that intelligence. So I would also make the argument in many ways, we are becoming, if you’re just looking at it purely from the us’s own ulterior motives of protecting itself. Theoretically, this is bad news. When we’re cut off from that intelligence, it means that the US is flying blind. Now, if you’re wanting to murder people willy nilly, if you if that’s what you want, then the lack of intelligence isn’t a problem if you’re not trying to actually determine if, if this is happening, if you’re simply wanting to blow up vessels send a message of fear to the region and potentially cause justification for the US to engage in further ways. This is the way to do it. It’s just it’s illegal. It violates international law. This is, I mean, this. This goes back to, you know, some of our most basic foundational documents of international law, Gore, including the UN Charter this, these kinds of actions are a clear violation this, these are not, do not fall under the categories where military forces are lawfully used. Yeah.
Gary 09:51
I mean, it’s a the press release that you sent out, you know, like, just listed, like, all of the different things that were. Are violated by this in terms of, you know, everything from the UN Declaration of Human Rights to the Law of the Sea to the War Powers Act, and just straight on down the line, it’s, there’s just, it’s just such a complete rejection of the rule of law up and down. It’s just such an extraordinary, unusual, strange and like, just remarkable thing. I mean, it’s just, it’s it’s astonishingly bad, it’s evil,
James Branum 10:37
it is. And what, I think, one most troubling aspects of this too, is that what the position that these actions are putting US service members under, because many of them are asking questions about what we’re doing, is this legal or not? And the problem again, because we’ve seen the Trump administration just this week, has threatened members of Congress with execution for simply speaking about this issue, for talking about the issue of illegal orders, and the moral the right that service members have to defy illegal orders, and arguably, in certain circumstances, the obligation to to to refuse illegal orders. The problem, of course, is there’s a few problems. One, of course, is for for sailors, for us, forces at sea, they are largely cut off from the outside world for communication purposes, particularly that the military will use tactical reasons as their excuse for this, but anytime that they’re engaged in things that they know are are possibly illegal. What do you know? That’s when they turn off the internet for the ship. That’s when they don’t let service members actually access the internet so they can’t read to find out really what’s going on. And hence, they can’t ask those tough legal questions. They can’t reach out to organizations that might help them to sort out these issues out. They can’t reach out to legal counsel, and it’s forcing them to make decisions on the fly. And the problem is, is that service members, one is that they, many of them, will end up doing things that they don’t want to do they believe morally wrong. That’s going to cause moral injury. There’s that. There’s also the very real risk that in future generations, service members who participate in legal actions could actually be prosecuted, either in the US or in before international law bodies for participating in these actions. The only thing that’s stopping that right now is us, military might that you know that it’s difficult to enforce any kind of international law standard on the US and the US defies those standards over and over and over again. But that’s that may not be the way it is forever. And so one of the to me for the military law Task Force. Mean our orientation is we care deeply about military service members as human beings. We want to empower them to be able to exercise their rights and to be able to act, act in accordance with their conscience. And the problem is, is that this scenario is is set up in such a way to cut service members off, to not allow them to have what they need to make good decisions.
Gary 13:16
I mean, the the military has its whole, you know, you know, judicial core and, right? It’s got, it’s got, it’s got its own internal lawyers, and those go on up the line. I mean, there’s, there’s institutions that can advise soldiers and sailors as to whether an order is illegal or not. All those all kind of come down under Trump anyway, right?
James Branum 13:40
Well, here’s the problem, all those jag lawyers, who do they represent, in most cases, they represent the command. In other words, they are the they are the legal advisors for the commanders. There are defense jag who are basically public defenders the military. Many of them are qualified, excellent attorneys, by the way, I’m not besmirching them at all. What I would say, though, is that generally, a service member does not have the right to have appointed defense counsel unless they’ve been charged with the crime. There’s some limited circumstances they can speak to jag in other ways, if they’re facing non judicial punishment or administrative separation. But in these kinds of scenarios, there’s not a defense jag hotline that a service member can call to say, Hey, I think I’ve been given a legal order. What do I do? That doesn’t exist. But moreover, when you think about the about the JAG officers that advise the command, one of the things the administration is doing is that they’re firing the lawyers who disagree with them.
Gary 14:43
Yeah, this is what kind of what I was getting at. Because, I mean, the the actual like service members, like at the at the bottom right, they won’t get illegal orders if only legal orders are coming down the chain of command. Percent right? You know, the President Trump isn’t going to individually call each sailor and tell them what to do, right? He relies on this chain of command, which means that there are people above that soldier or sailor who can say, No, I’m not passing on these orders because they’re illegal. And that’s, what you’re getting at right now, is that the advice for those people is being undermined by Trump firing all the people that disagree with him, absolutely.
James Branum 15:31
And the problem is, any scenario where you fire lawyers because you don’t like their legal judgment, that’s not a good scenario, particularly when you’re not making that decision for legal in other words, this isn’t a question of I think this lawyer is not doing their job well, or they are not effective as an attorney. No, these are people being fired because they told the administration what you’re proposing to do is illegal. I’m not going to sign off on it. I’m not going to say it’s legal when it’s not and then they get fired. That’s a dreadful, dreadful precedent to be setting.
Gary 16:08
Well, that’s what I always tell my doctor when he recommends something that I don’t like. I just, I would just look for a doctor will tell me I can only eat, right? Healthy, right?
Babette 16:20
Trump does not like anyone who questions his orders or what he will get rid of people who question
Gary 16:33
our service members when they first sign up to sign an oath of loyalty to Donald Trump. Isn’t that part of the rules? Right? Oh, no, brother,
James Branum 16:43
there’s no there’s no telling anymore.
Babette 16:47
So Could one of these firing on boats maybe end up firing on a boat that’s actually a Venezuelan? Military boat or something. Could that lead to, like a Gulf of Tonkin type of thing? Or, I don’t know, I’m I’m stretching here.
James Branum 17:17
I know there’s a lot of possibilities. I mean, again, when, when Trinidad and Tobago is so, so, so, so close to Venezuela, and you’re putting that many troops so close by there, we’re, it’s, it’s setting up a scenario where, where that the odds of some kind of accident happening, and then that accident being used to justify other Things is extremely high. It’s, you know. But another possibility is we have to be aware that this administration, the these are not the the wizards of military planning. These people, in my opinion, are, these are not great tactical thinkers. And so it is. There’s a lot. I mean,
Gary 17:57
if you were still in the military right now, I don’t know. Maybe you still are, you know, you know, Pete hegseth says you have to shave your beard. So, you know,
James Branum 18:07
I’ve never, actually, I’ve never been in the military. Actually, I’ve always been on the civilian side.
Gary 18:12
Well, that explains the facial hair. Then people can’t, can’t see you because we’re on radio, but, but, yeah, you’re violating all of Pete hegseth rules.
Speaker 1 18:28
So, yeah,
Gary 18:32
so, I mean, I do have a guess as to what is going to happen in the Caribbean.
James Branum 18:41
Well, I can, I can throw out a few possibilities. I think one possibility is, is that the administration is completely bluffing, that they are trying to destabilize Venezuela. They’re trying to destabilize stabilize the current government, and they may foolishly think that there is that just doing this will create enough instability that there could be some kind of opposition rise up, and that there could be the regime could fall apart because of that. If there’s, if that’s a strategy, it’s not a good one. Venezuela has been conflicted for a long time. You know, I just, I personally don’t see how that would be the thing. If anything, I would argue that it might push Venezuela towards more unity in opposition to the US. And I would throw out the example of how the US has handled Cuba for the last, you know, you know, since the revolution, especially since the early 60s, with the embargo, with the sanctions, has that undermined the governments in Cuba? No, it’s hurt the Cuban people, but has it? Has it shaken the stability of that government? No, if anything, it strengthened that government in opposition, a lot of people who may not be necessary. On board with the government there really hate the US, and so that it’s a weird scenario if you’re trying to if the US government’s trying to effectuate change in Venezuela, this is not the way to do it. But again, that could be one of their goals. Another possibility is that the US would be engaged in smaller scale, primarily aerial attacks on Venezuela. And so that would be the possibly would be at the most likely possibility would be the US would engage in war actions, but not do a ground invasion.
James Branum 20:39
I personally don’t see what in the world they had accomplished by doing that, other than, you know, earning the scoring of the world and potentially, again, getting the instability that’s already present in Venezuela, it could very easily flash out in all kinds of unexpected ways. Third option be a ground invasion, which would just be i, to me, it
James Branum 21:02
seems like it like a category, cataclysmically bad option. One of the issues about about Venezuela is, you just look at the population, it is so, so much bigger than, say, Panama, that, you know the there’s been a lot of comparisons of the US invasion of Panama back in the I’ve got 80s or 90s
Gary 21:24
operation, just cause under George W Bush, yeah, yeah,
James Branum 21:28
there’s, there’s, there’s no, it’s just not even in the same, same magnitude. And then you look at how big Venezuela is, this is. This would not be an easy situation for the US to engage in a ground war also, to be frank, the US has been, has been so focused on wars in the Middle East for some time. We’re not really equipped well for a ground war in a tropical climate. We’re not We’re not equipped for it. We’re not ready.
Gary 21:56
Yeah, you can see them like wearing all the, you know, the desert khakis from leftover from the Iraq War. And, like, you know, it’s, I mean, you know, I think Iraq, I mean, I hear more comparisons with Iraq than Panama, right? Yeah, which is, which is, you know, you’ve got, you’ve got the oil motive, you’ve got the, you know, the, I mean, you’ve got a much longer lead up, you’ve got all the proceeding sanctions for a long period of time, and just the relative sizes are much closer, right? So yeah, and that one went so well for us.
Babette 22:37
Yeah, could there be a possibility that the Trump administration would just grab the oil wells out in the Gulf.
James Branum 22:54
Yeah, that’s a possibility. I think it’d be difficult. I mean, one of the thing. I mean, it’s, you mean, as far as Venezuelan or, well, yeah, yeah, it’s certainly a possibility. That said it’s really difficult to, I don’t know. I think thinking it would, it would be very, very easily for that to turn into an environmental disaster, if it goes poorly, and as much as the administration doesn’t care about the environment, I think they do. They aren’t necessarily wanting to do things that make them look bad or that might cost them money, and so I think it’d be difficult to accomplish myself,
Gary 23:38
but that’ll be sort of like a Syrian scenario, where you seize the the oil fields and freeze the conflict with you getting the main thing that you wanted.
James Branum 23:48
Yeah, now that’s a definite possibility. I mean, certainly
Babette 23:54
airport is also right on the coast, so they could maybe come into there, attack that, or drop people into there, take over that, I don’t know.
James Branum 24:08
No, there’s a lot of possible. I mean, certainly a lot of possibilities for warfare that might be more limited in scope and duration is certainly possible. On the other hand, I just, I just don’t, do not believe the US has been effective at fighting wars like this in quite a while. And so if you comparing this well, like I’m looking at the map right now of Venezuela, and just seeing the number of this this would be tactically, would be a difficult work for the US to fight in the Venezuelan military is not insignificant. There’s also, of course, the possibility of other nations fighting on behalf of Venezuela being I don’t think the US can. Necessarily assume that Venezuela is all by itself in this situation. I think there’s very decent chance that Cuba could become involved. I’d be very frightening. This be a possibility, but Russia has shown in has has shown willingness to do all kinds of craziness. So there’s, there’s some really bad possibilities here. I mean, I think what we’re right now, when we hope that there’ll be cooler heads will prevail, because this is we are on the verge of a disaster.
Gary 25:30
I mean, I mean, usually when some crazy military scheme is cooked up by the civilian government, you have the military, you know, the brass tries to put the brakes on it because they say, Oh, look, look, this is going to be much harder than you think. Look at we’re going to have such this is going to be take, it’s going to take a lot more work than you’re expecting. Here are forced depletion estimates. And, you know, here’s what I’m just going to take and and they try to scare the civilian administration away from some like, hot headed, you know, jumping on something, making a war that the military doesn’t want to fight, but you’ve got a much different situation between, you know, Trump and proceeding presidents, because he just doesn’t like to hear certain advice, and that’s the problem. I also, I also wanted to ask about, you know, the potential way that the war might be conducted, because, I mean, the US didn’t have a problem with inflicting shock and awe on Iraq. And you know, we have not had a problem endorsing just the wholesale, you know, slaughter and destruction of civilian populations and infrastructure in Gaza. I think you know, had this happened, you know, prior to Gaza, when the main narrative was talking about, oh, how Russia is so evil because it harmed a civilian in Ukraine, right? It would send a very strange message. Now, if we were engaged in that type of activity. But now it just seems like Trump doesn’t care about that war, right? He just wants that war to go away. We’re not, we’re not putting out all sorts of anti Russian propaganda about harming civilians. We’re now, now embracing the idea of harming civilians. We’ll just be able to, if we, you know, Trump says, you know, I think I’ll just kill them, right? I mean, it says that’s, that’s the, that’s the level of mentality we have. So, I mean, without these, you know, limitations on people resisting unlawful orders at some point down the line. I mean, what is, what is going to what are the orders going to come to be from the top? They’re going to be awful. I think, I’m sorry she said last bit again, I think the orders coming from on top are going to be awful. I don’t trust there’s nothing I I don’t think that this administration would contemplate doing to Venezuela. And you know you can, and unless you have, like, you know, Russian or Chinese level air defense systems, you you’re, you’re, you don’t have a rule defense against just massive attacks on the civilian population. Well, that’s true,
James Branum 28:43
and I think that that the kind that if the US did that kind of war, it would have devastating consequences. On the other hand, as you can see, we can see from Gaza, you can destroy a country pretty thoroughly, and the people still survive. Significant numbers of them. You can’t kill everybody. And in this particular situation there, there’s some you
Gary 29:08
can kill a lot of people in Gaza, but it’s, I mean, Hamas is still blowing up tanks and stealing them and like, parading them out, you know, yeah, yeah.
James Branum 29:17
And that’s, and that’s going to be the scenario in Venezuela there, this is not going to be even with massive use of military force, and massive use of military force would have a massive backlash among the American people, my belief, and so I think I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. I mean, because, again, we what makes it so challenging, is trying to even have an intelligent analysis of this is so difficult when this administration is just such a loose cannon of unpredictability, you never know what they’re going to do next. But in this kind of scenario, what I would do there. Some things, I think that things that the US officers just not fully considered one being is that we would be invading a country that is Spanish speaking. That means a significant that’s a that means the people of this country speak a language that a significant number of the military, also the US military, speaks Spanish. Spanish. There’s quite a few soldiers who speak Spanish today, and so that makes a difference. When our troops will engage with ordinary people there, you’re not going to have the language barrier as big of a deal as it was in Iraq and in Afghanistan. One of the challenging things, and those those environments, was often the only way US forces could effectively operate among the ordinary people there was with the use of translators. That’s going to be less of an issue in Venezuela, and for the US, what’s going to undermine their the administration’s goals here are going to be that ordinary cert US service members will will get to actually talk to people in Venezuela. Ordinary people will be and again, because so many soldiers know Spanish, it’s going to be a game changer. It’s going to play out differently, and that’s going to make it messy and much more complicated.
Gary 31:17
Well, it’s really militates against the ground invasion. Yeah.
Babette 31:22
I understand that the idea could be to do like a strikes that would just take out some of the top leadership, President Maduro, some of his top military. I mean, I can’t imagine that it is very legal to take out the leader of another country that way.
James Branum 31:52
It would not be be legal. I would say that it might be a more achievable goal for the for the Trump administration, they might actually maybe be able to pull off. From that standpoint, it would be less cataclysmic than would a full scale invasion would be. On the other hand, I don’t think it would be as simple and easy as I think it would be. I think that’d be that would be very challenging for the US to pull that off, but it’s possible. It’s certainly possible. And and maybe that would be more like again, I think, I think that’s a good point. I think the odds of that happening are higher than a full scale invasion. But it would also, I don’t know. I think it’s we really don’t know.
Gary 32:40
I mean, I think, you know, the ultimate goal. I mean, I mean, I was thinking before about how, you know, I was thinking, I was thinking this with, basically, with respect to nuclear powers, right? And Venezuela is not a nuclear power. It does not have the problem, not, not harboring secret WMDs, the areas north, south, east and west of Caracas, but it but when, when confronting a military power, the only way you can win, you can’t win through consistent military escalation, because eventually that just leads to a nuclear conflict. The way, way you can, way you win against a nuclear opponent is by causing a regime change in the other side, right? So the US defeated the Soviet Union. Not a single nuke went off, right? We got Yeltsin in there, dismantled the whole system, right? And that, I mean, I think that is a model that is also applicable to non nuclear countries that are just you don’t want to engage in consistent escalation on the ground, right? What you want, what you want, is to couple your external action with some secret plot inside the country that will topple the government and put your people in and that way you declare victory, right? Yeah, I think, I think one thing that needs to be said is that, that that is not gonna be super easy in Venezuela. You know, there is, there is not the type of massive discontent with the Maduro presidency. He despite all of the kind of allegations against the last round of elections, he’s still a very popular guy. He’s there’s a lot of criticism of, like, the way he handles particular things. You know, there’s a lot of different, you know, factions and ideals in Venezuela. There’s that it’s still a very polarized country with a fairly large opposition, but the opposition is very fragmented and disorganized. It is not a. Majority of the population. And you know, the
Babette 35:04
opposition opposes a military attack on Venezuela. Some of it, some of the opposition
James Branum 35:15
prizes said that she’s in favor of it, but, but sure. I mean, the thing I would also say on this is that I think if that was actually a realistic possibility for the US, it would have already happened. I have no doubt that the CIA has been hard at work in Venezuela trying to engineer that, and has been for quite a while.
Gary 35:36
They’ve had a couple of coup attempts, and they even had one that was briefly successful, but they, but they haven’t been able to stick it, and
James Branum 35:47
because they don’t have the people behind them, I mean, it’s, it’s a very similar if you look at the history in Cuba, then the number of times the US tried to remove Fidel, they kept failing. And it was, it was primarily because the Cuban people stood with him overwhelmingly, and that’s going to be the situation here. And so I think, I think they’re actually already trying to they have been for quite a while, trying various dirty tricks, and I think they will continue to do so. But I might you know, one possibility is the administration might think targeted attacks doing things that might shake things loose in some way. I just to me, it’s like, if that was possible, it would have already happened.
Gary 36:31
Yeah, I mean, I mean, you think about like Guatemala in 1954 where there was a, you know, a fairly limited military attack that was used to, you know, assist in replacing the government, right? We’re using to have this one two punch where you try to convince the country that they’re, they’re, they’re being attacked from outside, and they’re going to lose and this is part of the, part of the pressure that allows the regime change to occur, right? I mean, I think, I don’t know what the US is precisely playing at, but I think it’s, I think it’s got a long history with a lot of recipes in its cookbook and and it’s, it’s, I think someone in that administration probably will have enough of a brain to try to divert whatever Trump and Rubio are trying to do into some scenario that’s been effective in the past.
James Branum 37:35
Yeah, I think that’d be accurate.
Babette 37:39
So what are you asking for? As the NLG? What are you calling for?
James Branum 37:52
Well, to begin with, you know, we are beginning by saying the US needs to quit attacking ships in the Caribbean. That’s that is, that is, that is right there is, there’s no, no legal justification whatsoever for those attacks that needs to stop right now. And it’s really, it’s under it’s not only about this the safety and security of those on the vessels, but it’s also really undermining the whole ability of nations to travel the high seas that one you know, we, our whole global economy, depends on ships being able to travel safely from point A to point B, with the US doing that, it’s creating yet further instabilities, and as in a global shipping system that’s already has so many vulnerabilities,
Gary 38:42
so it’s not just legality and the fact that it’s murder, but also the price of eggs.
James Branum 38:48
Absolutely, it’s all tied together.
Gary 38:51
We import from New Zealand, by the way,
Babette 38:57
and so this, I think about some Russian ships who had to take a long way around. They were trying to transport oil. I don’t know if it was to Cuba or if it was to somewhere else, but they were trying to transport oil, and they had to take a very long way around because they did not wish to try to cut through. Will the US ships will because they fueled an international incident?
James Branum 39:28
Yeah, no. And I think they’re, they’re, they’re smart to do so, but it’s sad that that’s even necessary. I mean, from a, from a legal standpoint, the high seas are supposed to be free for any flagged vessel to travel on. There are some rules. But outside of those rules, they’re you’re supposed to be able to freely travel. And so for the US to be doing this is undermining that whole thing. But I think that’s, that’s where we begin, is saying that, that we that that has to stop you cannot just attack vessels at sea without. Without any kind of legal proceeding whatsoever, without a declaration of war. You can’t even call this law enforcement, because, again, the police at this moment, at least, aren’t legally allowed to do summary executions in the streets. Even if they catch a criminal in the act, they still can’t kill you on the streets legally. Why is this allowed at sea? It’s not allowed. It’s just that’s what’s that what this administration wants to do. So that would be the beginning point. The second thing
Gary 40:26
is, we have, what they’re doing is giving piracy a bad name.
James Branum 40:30
Yeah, absolutely. So. So the three things that we were seeking to change, to change here, first of all, the ending, the attacks on the ships at sea, these indiscriminate killings has to stop. Number two is we need to stop the buildup of troops in the Caribbean. And really longer term, we really need to be asking some serious questions about why so many US troops from Puerto Rico as well. But for now, pulling the troops out of Trinidad and Tobago moving, moving the ships that are right now being situated around Venezuela. There’s no reason for that escalation of force to be happening. So that needs to end. Finally, the last piece of this is, is really goes, goes broader, and that is to for the US to quit seeking to undermine other countries in this kind of way that this is, this is not, this is not the rule of law. This is not. I mean, this is the bigger problem is that the US we have, some of this is stuff that’s directly tied to Trump. Some of it is longer standing issues. And one of the issues in this nation, in the US, has been that we have dispensed with the obligation of doing declarations war. We’ve dispensed from those formalities for some time now, and that’s created a scenario where US presidents have tremendous power to get country, to get the US deeply involved into a war without congressional involvement. That needs to end. That’s the bigger, bigger thing, but the most immediate issue, it’s, it’s these attacks on the vessels in the Caribbean. It’s the buildup of troops around Venezuela, those things that are really just, you know, building a powder keg can go off at any minute. We need to pull back from the brink, and we need to stop right now,
Babette 42:22
I know that who use the people in Puerto Rico really struggle to get rid of the US out of Vieques, and My understanding is that that is possibly reopened to us. Troops or US planes?
Gary 42:44
Well, it was, it was a proving ground for ordinance, right? They just blew things up there, right? That was the primary thing
Babette 42:54
for this. I don’t know but,
James Branum 42:56
but I do know that there is, there has that by having so many troops in Puerto Rico. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s basically, I mean, I think one of the issues here too is that for the for the US military, because we have so many troops, we have so much resources situated all in all parts of the world, it’s always creating temptation for US presidents to say, um, I, my poll numbers are going down. I need to start a war. It’s always a temptation, and so one of the most important things down the road is to pull these troops back, to not have so many overseas military bases. And that’s something for the National Lawyers has a long history of speaking out about the dangers of overseas military bases, the ways that oversees military bases, undermine local communities, hurt local communities in a lot of key ways, often also one of the problems in many countries are the the Status of Forces agreements that often insulate US troops and individual troops From legal consequences when they commit crimes in the civilian world and the host countries of these bases and so bigger picture, we need to really be undermining that whole thing, because it’s this, isn’t it’s not helping us. It’s hurting our nation. For us to be so entangled in all these different places,
Gary 44:16
yeah, I remember. I mean, you still hear about Okinawa. You hear about, well, coleago, where I’m about to go, right, Philippines. I mean, there’s a couple of like, particular, like, hot spots where it seems like US troops have been in, embroiled in either bad activity or, I mean, I remember back when, back in the 80s, when AIDS was like a really big thing, you know, they could, they’ll make a map that showed, you know, AIDS spreading around US military bases in places like Honduras in the Philippines. So it’s. Yes, you know, there’s, like, a long, long history of that as well, which makes sense that you’d be engaged in this long term. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I, I think it’s very difficult to even come up to an account of how many foreign military bases the US has.
James Branum 45:14
Well, there’s so many, and there’s so many secret ones. One of the places that we’re not getting accurate numbers at all on is Africa, the US has so so many troops down Africa, and often we have situations where we have, well, I’ll give one example. I’m going to double check real quick make sure I have this correct. But I believe it’s Djibouti that has, oh, that has a has a Chinese and a US military, overseas military bases within just a few miles of each other in the same country, same host country.
Gary 45:50
Yeah, that’s very believable.
James Branum 45:54
And it’s, it’s, it is such a dangerous situation. I mean, I mean it’s, it’s creating scenarios where, when you’re having these overseas forces right next to each other, and they’re in in countries where that they are, they’re so one of the problems is that these are countries that they often place these bases at, or places where that the the government, that’s that the local government in Power may have a tenuous hold on power, but also may just lack a lot of basic infrastructure and things like that. And so in a major when the US comes in and we build what our bases tend to look like, it’s it’s so incredibly disruptive to these local communities. So
Babette 46:40
just a thought here, the war with China that Trump likes to talk about could actually begin in Djibouti.
46:49
Yeah, yeah.
Babette 46:51
Also, you mentioned, just the bases in Africa Trump has threatened Nigeria.
James Branum 47:03
Yeah, and that one is so, so bizarre, and also I don’t think he understands, again, what would be at stake in attacking Nigeria. This is a massively huge country in people, not in geography, but in population. Is massively huge, massive urban centers. I mean, this is not, I don’t know what you
Speaker 1 47:31
can do, yeah, he only sees the oil, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gary 47:36
I mean, yeah. I mean, the last time Trump and Nigeria were in the news together was when he included Nigeria in this massive Muslim ban, which ultimately, like, wound up being like seven countries. One of them was Nigeria, which is like half Muslim and Chad. And for some reason, Venezuela was in the list too, which was strange, you know, but I guess it was, maybe it was more about oil than Muslims. I don’t know. It’s hard. It was a very strange concatenation of countries that
Babette 48:09
was in its first Tomb. Yeah, his first goal.
Gary 48:14
Okay, so All right, well, what is the NLG doing about this? And what should we be doing about this?
James Branum 48:25
Well, for the National Lawyers Guild and and I mostly work with the military law Task Force, which is a smaller part of the National Lawyers Guild, but there’s other parts of the guild also working on this, particularly the International Committee of the National Lawyers Guild. But what some of the things we’re doing is, first of all, we’re just trying to get attention to this issue, which is why we’re talking to the press. We’re putting out statements because we want to make sure that the American people know what is at stake that and again, I think often, the media doesn’t always give us full of a picture as it needs to be given. So we see part of our position is to be out there, to be sharing this message, getting the word out beyond that, though, the other piece that we are very involved in is being ready to provide legal support, particularly for service members who may be asking these difficult questions and seeking to find out what they can do legally. The challenging aspect of illegal orders in the military is, is that military the system itself is designed to prevent service members from acting in compliance with their higher values. What I mean by that is, is that under international, law is clear, and under us, law is clear too, that if a service member is given an illegal order, they can disobey that order. The problem is it’s how the system is set up to deal with that under the manual for courts martial, which is the document that interprets the UCMJ that explains the process of how things go in that document, in the interpretive guidance for. For the rule, the UCMJ provision that deals with disobeying a lawful order, it mentions, yes, there’s a defense for it being illegal. But then it goes on to say that is that the courts will operate with an assumption that all orders are legal, which means the burden of proof is on, is on the service member to prove that the order is not illegal. I’m sorry, the idea So, unless, so, so, until the service member makes that, that proof, then they can still be punished. Moreover, who can decide, in the end, who makes the decision about whether someone an order is legal or not. The only person who can do that according to rules for court martial is a judge in a court martial. Now the problem with that is that if a service member disobeys a lawful order, the odds are very high that they will not actually be prosecuted. Instead, they will probably punished in other ways, through what’s called non judicial punishment, under Article 15 of the UCMJ, they might face an administrative separation, they might many other things, unless they actually go to a court martial. Then this issue would not even be dealt with. If it does go to a court martial, at that point, the judge then is going to it would make the decision. But again, the burden of proof is on the service member. So normally, compared, compared to a typical court martial, if someone is accused of committing a crime, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove that the person did it. But in this case, you would also have this other bit of the burden of proof shift back to the service member, to the defendant,
Gary 51:42
they have the burden to show that you disobeyed an order, and then you have an affirmative defense that the order was illegal, which you have to prove Yes. And typically, none of that ever gets proven one way or the other, because they just put in your record that you violated an order, and they just start punishing you without it with something short of a court martial that you do not get any sort of legal defense.
James Branum 52:06
Yeah, and then let’s say you go, let’s say you take it to the court martial, and let’s say that the judge disagrees with you. Now you’re looking at significant jail time, and it’s a risk that very few service members are going to be willing to take unless, unless their conscience will will give them no peace. Most people
Babette 52:26
military, too, right? Military?
James Branum 52:29
Yeah, yeah, this should be a military judge. Now I will say positively, many military judges are excellent, thoughtful people who follow the law, and so I hope that they would rule, rule in the service members favor in the kinds of cases that we’re talking about today, but there’s no guarantee of that, and so it’s a very tenuous, scary situation to be in. And then, of course,
Gary 52:53
anything like civilian judges, then there’s always an element of risk, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like, the same as juries, but the same is true with judges in reality, right?
James Branum 53:03
Yes, and so that’s, that’s what makes this situation so difficult, is when there’s, there’s so little clarity about about for a service member facing these choices. So for the military, want Task Force, what we want to do is to be ready to connect service members with attorneys, but also to connect them with good resources to help them to educate themselves, to read through the rules and to know what some of these scenarios are. So those are some of the things beyond that, I would say for the public, what we really need is for the public to make their voices known to members of Congress. Congress could stop this in its tracks if it would simply do its job and exercises constitutional power. Congress could, right now, pass a law that says the US is forbidden from doing X, Y and Z. We could do that. Congress isn’t doing that right now, but it could change if there’s enough pressure from the public. The other piece of it is simply, I would say that we all need to be very informed about what’s going on, and especially one thing, thing we I think we have to also remember we look at what happened in Iraq, what happened in Afghanistan, one of the problems always are the abuse that gets, gets put onto people of the ethnicity that matches that of the Country the US is attacking, and so there’s a lot of Venezuelan Americans in our communities right now. We need to be ready to show solidarity with those folks, to support them, to help them. Obviously, things we’ve made worse by our current fascist ice situation. So that’s a whole other issue, but I would say we need to be ready for that, but also be ready for unintended consequences. Well, we
Gary 54:45
have vast parts of this country with people that at least look and sound Venezuelan,
Speaker 1 54:50
yeah, yeah. Well, and that
Babette 54:53
is a lot to do with ice. I mean, people can be just dragged off. I mean, at least I. Thinks they can just drag people off.
James Branum 55:04
So anything we can do to be building networks of solidarity now is going to be really important. And again, I think we have to remember what happened after 911 where Sikh Americans were being attacked because because of the traditional head gear, looking like something that people assumed was Muslims like, not even the same religion you people, but you know, you know the level of ignorance. I don’t, I don’t think, think that the American public
Gary 55:29
like attacks on the Chinese Americans after Pearl Harbor.
Babette 55:33
Yes, well, the big attacks on Sikhs was in the Milwaukee area.
55:38
Oh, wow.
James Branum 55:40
So that’s what we have to be ready for. We need to be ready to build up those networks of solidarity and to be ready to support people in this country who may get blamed for whatever is to come. And then I would say the other piece of it is, is that I would encourage anyone listening, is to get to know your neighbors who are in the military, be kind to them, get to know them and find out what’s going on in their lives, because they’re gonna be facing some really challenging circumstances. And I would also say not don’t assume National Guard won’t be sent. National Guard was heavily used in the Middle East wars in recent decades. If the US is stupid enough to do a ground invasion, we can almost it’s almost it’s almost a certainty the National Guard to be part of that contingency. So now’s the time to make those connections, to build networks of solidarity, and especially if you encounter people in the in the guard or in the active duty military who are having these questions, encourage them to call the GI rights hotline, which is, which is really a good starting point. Reason I say to call them first is they really do a good job of triage, of helping service members to know, do you need a lawyer? Do you need this? Do you need that? And so their website’s gi rights hotline.org, or their number is 1-877-447-4487, of course, the military law Task Force is ready to help with making connections lawyers as well. Our website’s NLG, mltf.org, yeah.
Gary 57:06
I mean, I think one of the things that sort of you just sort of vaguely touched on there was, I mean, getting to know your military neighbors, because, you know, we are at a point in this country where there’s this intense gulf between military service members and everyone else. It used to mean that, it used to be, you know, that you know a soldier is a person in your neighborhood, right, like the milkman or the or the whatever, right? And now it’s like, there’s like, two separate worlds. There’s this big divide there. And most people don’t know people in the military. I mean, I know a handful, but it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, that’s, that’s like, a structural problem that also needs to be addressed in terms of, you know, just having a more, I don’t know, integrate military that’s more integrated with the civilian population the rest of the country. It’s so, okay, well, I mean, I mean,
Babette 58:21
the other things that we need to know, I think we can wrap it up.
James Branum 58:27
Yeah, I think that’s it. I really appreciate y’all having me on and
Gary 58:32
great. Well, thank you very much.
James Branum 58:34
You’re welcome. It’s great talking to you. Take care. All right. Bye. You.
