No, not for dinner. Though the Venezuelan palate is probably undergoing worse challenges under the kind of rule that our own Democratic Party would happily import to our shores.
Sunday night in Caracas continues with a blackout of Venezuelan homes, businesses, and facilities like hospitals. The nation has lost Internet service. Refugees bleed out of the country by the millions. Something must be done and it is up to us to do it because no one else can. Kinda.
As spiritually pleasing as it might be to see the 82nd Airborne waft down over Caracas to share their martial beneficence with the scared semi-trained conscripts of the Glorious Bolivarian Republic, we’ve got to find a different way to skin this feline. If not, the screams of Yanqui intervention will permeate and overshadow the goal of giving El Presidente his walking papers to whatever locale he can bribe his way into. There is one way. By doing it we can even reverse an American historical wrong to Latin America.
During the blessed year of my nativity, actually during the very day I was born, the U.S. was betraying Latin American freedom by turning tail and running at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. I’ve gone over this before in this column. So I will spare you. But if we do it right this time, with a Venezuelan scenario, it could balance the scales a bit.
No, not just provide promised air cover. But organize and launch a coup de main on Caracas and its current socialist leadership using U.S. support personnel and material but South American troops from the friendly conservative powers of Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil. On the ground, not a Yanqui in sight. It’s Latin America cleaning up its own house with a little help from us.
It would give the Argies a chance to recover a little glory after their 80s-era seriocomic venture in the Falklands. The Colombians are on the border bearing the brunt of the refugee burden and want it stopped. Brazil is run by a fun-loving former Army captain who might just do it for anti-Bolshie kicks. Maybe the Chileans would throw in a helicopter squadron for expedited judicial adjudication.
No matter what the motivation, it gets us what we need to have in our own backyard, Latins will love the military glory, and the message gets sent that we can have our flan and eat it too.
Yes, this president, given his general non-interventionist attitude, may not initially cotton to this idea. But he does like to swing the Big Stick. Make sure no U.S. troops are ever there to get bogged down in nation-building or an insurgency (neither needed or likely by the Venezuelans) and he may sign on. Given the thing is done properly, this also couldn’t hurt his chances for reelection.
Trump the Liberator. Has a nice ring, eh?
Especially in Spanish.
