You've commented about this a lot, but you haven't mentioned if this was even legal. Or, specifically, a legal use of Executive power. I believe Congress already rescinded the 2002 special powers act (forget the exact title), so such actions should require the consent of Congress. No?

The boundary between the Executive's power to direct the military for national security purposes, and the Legislature's power to declare war and pass laws governing the use of said military, has been contested and disputed for many decades. Suffice it to say that Presidents usually say they have complete power under the Constitution to use the military for nearly any purpose that isn't an actual declared "war," and Congress tends to say that they can (and in some cases have) put whatever chains they want on such use.

And the SCOTUS (and the lower courts) has tended to stay completely out of it, basically saying that the there's no resolvable legal issues there and the other two branches have to work it out.

So I think that any time someone tries to figure out whether (much less to baldly assert that) some exercise of military power is illegal, at least on the question of what the President can do with his own Article I authority without Congress blessing it, they're going to be entirely guessing. And I don't have much to add to that.

A ton of the other stuff that they're talking about is very dubious indeed. For example, if Venezuela were to "give" the U.S. 50 million barrels a day, and the U.S. were to sell it on the open market, the President doesn't get to just decide what to do with that money. That's the country's money, not the President's personal money. That money has to be appropriated by Congress if it gets spent anywhere. The President has vast powers over the Navy, but he can't just cut a deal with Venezuela for divvying up a few billion dollars in oil revenue however he likes.

But for the military operations themselves? That's what we in the legal profession refer to by the technical term, "A Damn Good Question."