Victor Davis Hanson: ‘They Weren’t Prisoners!’: Venezuela and the Second-Guessing of the Military

In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc weigh our military actions against Venezuela and the charge the U.S. military “executed” narco-terrorists who were “prisoners.”

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. 

SAMI WINC: We’re at war, according to our Secretary of War. And nobody argues with that. So, if we’re at war, I think we learned in Vietnam that the micromanaging of what—

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: I don’t think you want to go into Venezuela on ground.

WINC: No.

HANSON: Because let’s count the ways. You’ve got the MAGA base that does not want optional military engagements. The Rand Pauls, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson. Okay. That’s clear.

And then once you’ve staked so many assets, it’s like he’s put a frog in the pot and turned up the temperature. So, they can’t fly in and out of Venezuela, they can’t use ships, can’t go in. It’s basically an embargo. How long can you sustain it, put soldiers at sea in a combat situation? And what if [Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro] just says, “I’m going to wait it out”?

So, what’s the next step to ratchet up the pressure? I don’t know what that is. But once you’ve committed these forces, and you put them right off the coast, and you said he has to go, you’ve committed the prestige of the U.S. military. And if you back down, it’s kind of like what Joe Biden did when he said it depends on whether it’s a minor invasion [into Ukraine]. Or [how former Secretary of State] Antony Blinken was dressed down in Anchorage by the Chinese, or the Chinese balloon. Any indication that there are not dire consequences once you’ve made that decision, it’s very hard. So, I’m not sure that I would have put all those assets so quickly right there because now it’s a question of willpower. And if he says, “I can survive without my drug revenues or I can get them from other countries,” then he may be able to survive.

We did this once before with [Panamanian dictator Manuel] Noriega. He was a drug smuggler. The other problem is he just pardoned the president of Honduras, who is a conservative, who had been convicted in a U.S. court of drug smuggling, sentenced to 40 years. So, it doesn’t look good to say we can’t tolerate any drug running from Latin American countries, and we’re going to go to war almost, but this guy right north of you has been convicted of drug running and yet you pardoned him. So that’s problematic. He pardoned him because he said that the Biden administration was politically hostile to his politics. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I’m just talking about optics.

WINC: I was asking the question of didn’t we learn in Vietnam and do you feel like it still stands that micromanaging military affairs on the battlefield does not work very well? That we as a citizen should expect our president that we elected and our military to be given orders and then understanding there are laws …

HANSON: I think the order was—

WINC: There’s some laws, but in general, the orders were in this case hit the drug boat, sink the drugs or destroy the drugs, and destroy all the drug runners and that’s what the orders were to that regional commander.

HANSON: Yes, and that’s what orders always are. And then the question is … let me give you an example. In the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans, under a lot of irregular troops, went in at Malmedy and executed prisoners. And during the Dieppe raid, they executed prisoners. In the Dunkirk evacuation, the Germans executed prisoners. The question is then: Did they get that at Nuremberg? Did they get that command from the general or not? And the U.S. does not execute prisoners. But it’s happened.

The people who executed the Americans, the SS, when they were captured in elements of the Battle of Bulge, subsequently, some of them were executed by American soldiers. I don’t know any American soldiers that were held captive. I mean, captive to the law and culpable. So again, it’s a fine line when you hit a military target and the target is still there, so you know that there are people in there that can’t fight back and that are suffering. So, do you hit it again to eliminate the threat or do you consider those people prisoners of war even though you’re not even near them?

What I’m getting at is this: They say they were executed prisoners of war. They weren’t in possession of the United States. It would be one thing if they had come up quickly with a PT boat, so to speak, and got them, put them on the boat, and then started going out to high sea and throw them overboard. But they were part of a kinetic operation is what I’m saying. It was still ongoing.

It’s all part of a narrative that we saw with the video, this Seditious Six, so to speak. And out of nowhere, Sen. Mark Kelly has decided that he’s going to be a prominent anti-Trump spokesperson. So, he made the video, he was subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, where he called for people to disobey orders if they thought they were illegal. Now he’s weighing in that Pete Hegseth should be impeached.

Now he’s weighing in and this has been an avenue for his media exposure. But he has to be careful because no one believes that if the person is not in your possession and he’s still part of a kinetic ongoing battle that he’s a prisoner. You know what I’m saying?

My grandfather, I asked him, in World War I, when I was a little boy, I said, “What were you doing?” He said, “I’m a Lewis machine gunner.” He was a Teamster. And they put him in a combat unit. And he was gassed and disabled. But he basically said, “I got sick of shooting young Germans and old Germans as they were running away. We were chasing them.” And they weren’t surrendering, but they obviously couldn’t fight back. They’d given up, and they were running back. The Americans were chasing them with arms and shot them.

So, I don’t know what the Left means by prisoners, shooting prisoners or executing prisoners. They weren’t prisoners.

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