Cleanup on Aisle V (for Venezuela) |
The precision strike against Venezuela that led to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on criminal charges was without a doubt one of the high points of U.S. military history.
And there should be no doubt that the success of the operation redounds to the credit of President Donald J. Trump. No other president in recent memory would have had the guts or imagination to authorize the operation, but Trump has a history of using the military in a surgical manner to take out our enemies (in the case of Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Iranian Quds Force) or to neutralize global threats (in the case of last year’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities).
Despite the criticism on the right that such operations are not “America First,” there is no doubt that eliminating our adversaries’ threat potential is indeed putting America First. In a world grown increasingly dangerous, we don’t have the luxury of waiting for our enemies to strike at us before responding.
Fortunately, there has been little meaningful opposition to Trump’s campaign to rid Venezuela of its home-grown narco-terrorist. Yes, Democratic senators took to the airwaves to decry what they considered to be the use of brute force by the U.S. military against a sovereign nation. But who do they think they are kidding? Venezuela was a rogue nation for 30 years, led by oligarchs and treating its own citizens like dirt.
As long ago as 2018, the Cato Institute called the collapse of legitimate government in Venezuela “the biggest humanitarian crisis you have never heard of,” with millions of people fleeing the failed socialist state. Even if the U.S. didn’t have a reason to bring down Maduro for his involvement in drug trafficking, we have a valid stake in stopping the influx of illegal migrants from Venezuela by re-establishing order in their homeland.
And Venezuelans understand that too. Almost two-thirds of Venezuelans living abroad support the U.S. military intervention. Fewer make the same claim in Venezuela proper, but for good reason. They have been living in fear of the Maduro regime........