The United States just pulled off one of the boldest and most consequential operations in recent memory: Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro was captured by U.S. forces and taken to New York to face longstanding U.S. criminal charges. For years Democrats and the international left shrugged while Maduro presided over a narco-state that flooded our streets with cocaine and destroyed a once-prosperous nation.
Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores appeared shackled in a Manhattan federal court and pleaded not guilty, insisting he remains Venezuela’s president even as the rule of law finally catches up to him. That courtroom moment was a clear message — America will not let tyrants hide behind foreign borders while they profit from violence and misery.
This operation came at a cost, and the humanitarian toll is tragic: dozens of Venezuelan security officers and a reported 32 Cuban personnel embedded with Maduro’s forces were killed during the strikes and raid. These are sober facts that underline the depth of the regime’s co-dependence on hostile actors and the stakes involved in dismantling transnational criminal networks.
Predictably, global institutions and hostile states screamed about violations of international law while ignoring the decades of Venezuelan lawlessness and the trafficking that made Americans less safe. The UN and Beijing rushed to denounce the action, but moral equivalence is not leadership — protecting our citizens from narco-terrorism is.
Conservatives should be unapologetically proud that American capability and resolve made this possible; this is the kind of precise, time-limited action that defends American interests without committing us to endless occupation. Call it common-sense realism: use superior intelligence and elite forces to remove criminal regimes, then withdraw and let reconstruction and lawful governance follow — not perpetual nation-building experiments championed by the left.
There will be legal arguments about immunity, sovereignty, and precedent, and justice must follow through the courts where evidence and indictments stand. The American people deserve clarity and accountability, and our justice system — not empty international platitudes — should resolve whether Maduro’s narcotics and weapons charges meet the evidence against him.
This moment also exposes why the Monroe Doctrine still matters: the Western Hemisphere cannot become an outpost for China, Russia, and their proxies to exploit weak states and traffic drugs into our cities. If we are serious about national security, we must defend our neighborhood, support legitimate alternatives inside Venezuela, and ensure that American companies and workers benefit from rebuilding what socialism destroyed.
To patriots across this country: celebrate decisive leadership, demand transparency from your government, and insist that future policy is smart, limited, and focused on American security and prosperity. The fall of Maduro is a chance to reset policy in the hemisphere — if we seize it with courage and common sense, the long-suffering people of Venezuela and hardworking Americans alike will be better off.
