Exactly what Team Trump intends to do with (or to) Venezuela is far from clear, but it clearly wants the Maduro regime gone ASAP, and with excellent reason.<\/p>\n
Operation Southern Spear has sunk<\/a> roughly two dozen drug-cartel boats in recent weeks, while the Pentagon has now built up<\/a> the largest US military presence in the region in more than three decades \u2014 with Marines as well as Navy and Air Force assets deployed not just to US territory in the region, but in allied nations such as the Dominican Republic as well as Trinidad and Tobago.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump even warned Saturday<\/a> on Truth Social that airlines and criminals should \u201cconsider\u201d Venezuelan airspace \u201cclosed,\u201d though he evidently hasn\u2019t ordered US forces to make that happen, since flights continued through at least Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n Critics fume that US forces can\u2019t know the boats they\u2019re sinking are actually cartel ones, but experts say it\u2019s pretty easy to tell: They\u2019re the only ones equipped with multiple, expensive high-speed engines so they can outrun surface vessels looking to intercept drug shipments; fisherman can\u2019t afford anything like such vessels, nor do they need them.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Democrats like lefty Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen are screaming about possible \u201cwar crimes\u201d and hoping to invoke the War Powers Act to prevent any further US action.<\/p>\n Without question, the regime headed by Nicol\u00e1s Maduro is a menace to ordinary Venezuelans (more than 8 million have fled the country\u2019s dire shortages, roving gangs and general chaos) and to the whole hemisphere: It\u2019s long been deeply intertwined<\/a> with the Cartel de los Soles and other international criminal organizations, smuggling fentanyl and other deadly drugs; it hosts Chinese, Russian<\/a> and Iranian assets, enabling espionage and other hemisphere-wide meddling; and of course the refugees its misrule has produced are a burden on its neighbors all the way up to Canada.<\/p>\n And it has zero legitimacy: Maduro\u2019s minions blatantly fixed the 2024 presidential election (and likely several before that<\/a>), while opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado this year won the Nobel Peace Prize for \u201cfor her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy\u201d \u2014 at least her third global human-rights honor these last two years, a clear sign that the entire civilized world recognizes the regime\u2019s evil.<\/p>\n