You're Fired!

A lively start to the weekend in Caracas: the US military flew in, seized the President and his wife, and for good measure (according to local rumour) bombed the mausoleum housing the remains of Hugo Chavez. Then they flew out, and, per Marco Rubio, "anticipate no further action against Venezuela".

America has done nothing like this since it captured a previous Latin-American strongman, Noriega, back in the Eighties. And that required ground troops and blasting a fortnight's worth of caterwauling rock'n'rollers into the president's refuge at the Vatican embassy. If the facts at dawn hold for the rest of the day, this has been a remarkable operation of brilliant precision - planned (according to a Steyn Club commenter's son who was part of the force) a fortnight ago and awaiting only favourable weather conditions.

Imagine if the first night of the so-called War on Terror had gone like this. To be sure, capturing or killing Osama bin Laden was a challenge of a different order. But it is worth recalling that, on that opening night of a wasted two decades in the Hindu Kush, a US drone had the fleeing Mullah Omar in its sights and could have blown him to his virgins. Yours truly just shy of a quarter of a sod-bollocking century ago:

Lacking the authority to 'push the button', the agency relayed the news back to central command in Florida, where General Tommy R Franks, the head man, replied, 'My JAG doesn't like this, so we're not going to fire.' A JAG is a Judge Advocate-General — i.e., a military lawyer — and the only reason I know that is because there's a show on CBS called JAG. It says something about our times that the only military adventure series on American network TV is about an army lawyer. So, rather than offing the mad mullah and worrying about ass-covering later, the ass-covering took precedence and the mullah got away.

The then Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is reported, upon hearing the news, to have kicked in a couple of doors. But he did not relieve the useless parade general of his command. His successor, Pete Hegseth, is committed to transforming the wretched JAG culture of the Franks types, and capturing a sitting president and reducing his predecessor's tomb to rubble is a good way to start - even, or even especially, if Rubio is right and that's the end of it. Venezuela's Vice President Delcy Rodríguez is currently demanding that the United States produce "proof of life" for her boss. Wouldn't you like to have seen whoever the Taliban's Deputy Assistant Under-Emir doing likewise on the morning after? This is a crude method, but can hardly prove more disastrous than two decades of "Take Your Child Bride to Work" Day in Jalalabad. As I wrote all those years ago:

Had Mullah Omar been killed on the first night of bombing, what a message that would have sent!

It's not difficult. You wanna make the mistake of catching our eye?

Fine, but you're in the last month of your life, pal; don't start any long books.

If the Secretary of State is to be believed, what happens next is up to the various factions in Venezuela. America has no great national interest there: all it requires of that benighted land is a guy who will not catch their eye. To continue my lessons of recent history, consider if four years ago Putin's special forces had been capable of flying into Kiev and removing Zelenskyyyyy to a show trial in Moscow.

The United States has not an imperialist bone in its body. We old-school types might regret that, but it is a fact and there is no point pretending that any American wants to serve as Attorney-General in Kabul or Police Commissioner in Tikrit. But you can't spend forty per cent of the entire planet's military budget and have nothing to show for it.

Maduro in an orange jumpsuit is something to show for it.

At least until the District Court Judge of Dead Moose Junction orders him restored to the presidential palace...

Mark's international bestseller America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. If you haven't read the book during its first seventeen years, well, you're missing a treat. It's still in print in hardback and paperback. (Buy it at a 77% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 47% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)

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Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human rights activist. Among his books is "The Undocumented Mark Steyn: Don't Say You Weren't Warned". (Buy it at a 49% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 67% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)