It’s easy to forget the Venezuelans chose socialism. It was theirs to enter and, if they choose to do so, it’s theirs to exit. If we intervene militarily, we face a certainty of hundreds of thousands of hostile Chavistas joining the already untenable numbers of other Central Americans accessing this country.
We should’ve learned from the debacle in Iraq that what looks like early success can, without nearly flawless execution, morph into an intractable quagmire in short order. What should NEVER be overlooked is the fact that, while many Venezuelans disapprove of Maduro at present, what will unite that country is opposition to a hostile foreign power launching a military intervention. We would pay a very steep price for a military adventure in Venezuela.
I never said that we should intervene militarily. No, we don’t need to send in the Marines, even though they’re very good at that kind of thing.
What we need to do, to help rid this hemisphere of Russian and Chinese influence, is to give monetary, logistical, moral and legal support to the opposition. We need to organize and support Brazil, Columbia and others who should be the ones (if anyone) to intervene, since it is literally their backyard. Hell, if we could get rid of Maduro and his regime by giving him a pallet with $1.5 billion of cash and a free flight to the repressive/Communist nation of his choice, then we should do it...but no US troops, that I have believed from the beginning.
But NOT doing nothing, either.