Attempting to run Venezuela won’t end well for the US. It’s only a matter of time before a insurgency emerges and US troops will be needed. Americans will be outraged if our soldiers needlessly die in Venezuela.
It doesn’t sound like any long-range plans were made for the transition to a new government.
Shutting down the drug cartels will be even harder. They’ve probably corrupted the military and government officials.
I kind of figured the plan to run Venezuela was to boss around the person running Venezuela, explaining that the US will bomb that person — with zero boots on the ground — if they don’t do as they’re told, at which point the next person will get the same offer.
Who would the insurgency attack? What would be their aim?
Supporters of the party whose election victory this past July was stolen would seem to have a motive for insurgency. But they did not start one last year, and I am failing to understand why switching from one illegitimate leader to another of the same party would change this.
They would attack the oil infrastructure, in order to deny the oil to the US. Something that the Iraqi resistance successfully did until we gave up on stealing their oil.
Also, anyone believed to be cooperating with America; something else that happened in Iraq, people were killed by their own families for collaboration. I’m sure that’s one reason their Vice President isn’t expressing support for all this; she wants to live.
Wait, hold up - so the 40 deaths were almost all Cuban mercenaries hired by Maduro? What happened to the 40 civilian casualties we kept being told about by some in this very thread? Was that misinformation?
Entirely possible. It may have also been incomplete information from the early hours of the attack.
This AP article quotes the Cuban government as saying that the 32 were “military and police officers.” The term “mercenary” comes across, to me, as a soldier-of-fortune, or a gun-for-hire, and not a member of a nation’s military or police force. That said, it’s possible that Maduro or his government paid for the Cubans to be there.
The 40 number is probably just wrong. A low initial estimate I’d guess, or deaths throughout the city before bodies were counted wherever Maduro was holed up.
Not mercenaries, but Cuban security forces. Like Karzai being protected by the US at points.
If they were Cubans operating out of Venezuela to guard the leader of Venezuela, it seems to me that they’re basically mercenaries, even if they’re originally there because they were ordered to be by Cuba.
“Earlier, Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino said a large part of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s security team had been killed during the US operation, without giving exact numbers.”
So the 80 number includes 32 Cuban security forces and “a large part” of Maduro’s own security team.
Is there any actual evidence of civilian casualties or was that just conjecture?