The Glorious Revolution

In 1688 the heretofore subjects of the English King James II elected to remove him from power, as of course they had a right to do. This is generally known as "the Glorious Revolution" because it was relatively nonviolent (not quite completely so, but surprisingly so). 

Thomas Macaulay's account of the Revolution in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second exemplifies the "Whig history" narrative of the Revolution as a largely consensual and bloodless triumph of English common sense, confirming and strengthening its institutions of tempered popular liberty and limited monarchy. Edmund Burke set the tone for that interpretation when he proclaimed: "The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty."

Today's revolution was even less bloody than that, apparently; I haven't heard any casualty figures from the other side, but we seem to have lost no ships and no fighting men. That's shocking given that the raid was conducted with helicopters over a nation with many, many surface to air missiles. That, combined with the surprise and the lack of leaks from "government sources speaking anonymously because they lacked authority to talk to the press" suggests that some genuine progress has been made since the Afghan withdrawal in military leadership and coherence. 

However, it also suggests a strong performance by the clandestine service. While of course I can't prove it, the striking likelihood is that our clandestine service under the present leadership is more capable both of penetration of a hostile regime and of keeping its own secrets. 

Let us hope this all remains as bloodless as possible.

UPDATE: The NYT reports some 40 Venezuelans may have died in the action; they also confirm a successful and lengthy clandestine operation to map and prepare for the raid.

In August, a clandestine team of C.I.A. officers slipped into Venezuela with a plan to collect information on Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president, whom the Trump administration had labeled a narco-terrorist.

The C.I.A. team moved about Caracas, remaining undetected for months while it was in the country....  It was a highly dangerous mission. With the U.S. embassy closed, the C.I.A. officers could not operate under the cloak of diplomatic cover. But it was highly successful. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference that because of the intelligence gathered by the team, the United States knew where Mr. Maduro moved, what he ate and even what pets he kept.

That information was critical to the ensuing military operation, a pre-dawn raid Saturday by elite Army Delta Force commandos, the riskiest U.S. military operation of its kind since members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in a safe house in Pakistan in 2011.

The result was a tactically precise and swiftly executed operation that extracted Mr. Maduro from his country with no loss of American life, a result heralded by President Trump amid larger questions about the legality and rationale for the U.S. actions in Venezuela.

Mr. Trump has justified what was named Operation Absolute Resolve as a strike against drug trafficking.  

Although we usually talk about the Abbotobad raid as a military raid, officially the SEALs who carried it out were placed in the temporary command of the CIA for the purpose. This was to cover a legality: the legal authority to do it isn't military, but the Agency's. You may remember a similar plot device in the movie Sicario, where the Agency has to get a fig leaf of an FBI agent in order to establish a 'joint task force' that can operate inside the United States (normally, CIA employees aren't armed inside the United States except for training, and to provide security and such; and indeed, relatively few of them are armed even outside of the borders; in the movie, CIA SAD (now SAC) wanted to run an operation just a bit within the border, so they needed a fig leaf). 

I keep expecting to learn that some similar legal fig leaf was deployed here -- there was an FBI agent along on the raid, apparently, which is being described as a law-enforcement matter in pursuit of indictments in US Federal Court. So far, however, I haven't read of that being the case; the NYT piece says the FBI HRT was there in case he was needed to negotiate a surrender. It would only be a fig leaf in any case, but I'm surprised if it were omitted because it's the kind of thing that is usually done by the lawyers.