Trump voter base would recoil at attack on Venezuela or Iran, backers warn

It’s a difficult situation in Venezuela for Trump, both strategically and politically. It looks like Maduro is extremely unpopular in Venezuela at this time, and actually has few supporters among top military officers. Cuban security forces are keeping Maduro in power by stopping the Venezuelan military officers from meeting, talking, and getting organized to remove Maduro from power. The mainstream news media misrepresents what’s actually happening and says “the military remains loyal to Maduro”, when actually they’re just afraid of the Cubans who are watching and threatening them 24/7. I’m starting to get disgusted with the mainstream media coverage of Venezuela. Bolton has it right, when he said the Venezuelan military hasn’t done more to get rid of Maduro because of fear of the Cubans.

So eventually Trump could have a tough decision to make about ordering airstrikes on Maduro and the top Cuban security men. Airstrikes would have to take out a lot of the top Cubans and scare the rest away, otherwise they’d just replace Maduro with another puppet Chavista politician. There’s risk in ordering airstrikes, but there’s also political risk if Trump does nothing but sanctions while the situation gets worse in Venezuela. That could make him look ineffective and unwilling to help victims of brutal socialist regimes, and cost him votes in the key political state of Florida. I’m really curious abut what Trump’s plan is if the Maduro regime arrests Guaido. What are the “serious consequences” that our national security people say will happen if Guadio is arrested? Would that mean airstrikes on Maduro or just heavier sanctions?

A major ground attack looks highly unlikely because Maduro’s army has a lot of heavy weapons and it would only take several thousand well-trained soldiers to operate those weapons. They have 485 battle tanks and some other heavy weapons, according to this website:
https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id=venezuela

I’d say 95% of the Venezuelan soldiers would not fight a US-lead ground force and would actually welcome us, but it would only take several thousand fanatical soldiers operating those tanks to cause a lot of trouble for a ground force and potentially serious casualties on our side. We could defeat them quickly in about a week with a full air and ground attack, but it could be costly for our side. Venezuela has lot of forests where tanks and other heavy weapons can be hidden, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan. We’d probably end up in urban combat at the end of the attack, and our soldiers don’t have much experience with urban combat and all the tactics of avoiding urban ambushes.

There’s no chance of any attack on Iran, unless they attack our ships or troops. Then Trump would counter-attack on their attacking forces. But there’s no way we’ll get into any kind of war with Iran.

It’s all a tough situation in Venezuela and we’ll probably keep going with tougher sanctions for now and working with our allies at helping the Venezuelan opposition. If Maduro is still there by next Fall, then Trump has some tough decisions to make as the election year approaches.

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