This ain't no "cakewalk"

Nicolás Maduro is a tyrant, a killer, a narco trafficker and a very bad man.

Fentanyl does not come from Venezuela, and there are many leaders in the world who fit the Maduro profile. Many.

For the record, Venezuela is a much larger country than both Iraq and Afghanistan, with thousands of miles of coastline, jungles, and mountains that exceed 16,000 feet.

The Donald has announced that the United States will “run” Venezuela, while simultaneously dismissing María Corina Machado, the opposition leader, and the 2025 recipient of the Nobel peace prize, as “a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect to be a leader."

How did DOGE work out? How about Covid?

These words appeared in The Washington Post 23 years ago in an op-ed, written by Ken Adelman, a close advisor to Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney:

I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they’ve become much weaker; (3) we’ve become much stronger; and (4) now we’re playing for keeps.

Here was the cost of the cake:

• 4,492 US service members and 334 coalition force members were killed from the 2003 invasion until the formal U.S. withdrawal in December 2011

• 32,292 US service members, plus thousands more coalition force members, were wounded in Iraq

• Approximately 200,000 Iraqis were killed

• Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were wounded

In Afghanistan, the United States toppled the Taliban in 71 days with Special Forces soldiers on horseback calling in B-52 strikes.

Today, the Taliban rule Afghanistan, and the United States withdrew from the country 20 years later in chaos and defeat.

Here are the statistics on that war:

• Approximately 2,450 Americans were killed and over 20,000 were wounded from 2001 until the U.S. withdrawal in 2021

• 3,600 coalition forces were killed and hundreds of thousands wounded

Estimates on the financial cost of both failed wars range between $4 and 6 trillion, while the moral, physical and psychological injuries imposed on a generation of American forces is both invaluable, and something the country will pay for at least another 50 years.

The price is staggering, and it is the cost of politicians with bad judgement.

John McCain used to make a very simple point on the campaign trail:

Political parties don’t go to war. Nations do. Political parties don’t lose wars. Nations do.

He was a man who knew something about war and its consequences.

Donald Trump is a liar who lacks the moral authority to take the United States to war because he is not a national leader. Rather, he is the head of a faction that holds power with complete disregard for half the country and deep disdain for a great many of the parents, grandparents, spouses and children of the Americans who will be lowered into the ground at Arlington National Cemetery.

Section 60 is where the fallen from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are buried.

It’s full.

I promise you this: none of the widows and none of the kids of America’s dead soldiers are going to get a penny of Venezuela’s oil money, but Donald’s family will.

Donald loves doing deals.

Venezuela will be like crypto for the Trump family — just bloodier and costlier for you — while bringing about the same returns for an average American, which is zero.

The daring, skill and professionalism of the US Special Operations Command beggars imagination, and frankly description, but it raises an elementary question:

How can it be that they can be so competent, while actually being part of the same system of government that includes a Department of Justice that is so corrupt and incompetent that it can’t manage the release of the Epstein files?

It makes you think.

Maybe the thing to do is to give Donald an oil well for each Trump for every 10,000 files released.

It may hurry the process.

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