Kenneth Belk @bel2266 - Twitter Profile

The United States’ recent military operation in Venezuela — decisive, disciplined, and strategically executed — deserves to be recognized for what it was: an act of legitimate self-defense. Americans have every reason to commend it, because the American people have been under sustained attack by Venezuela’s narco-dictatorship. Nicolás Maduro was never a legitimate president — certainly not after the most recent electoral farce. What remained was a regime built on coercion, corruption, and violence: a dictator accused of crushing dissent, running a criminal state, and enabling narcotrafficking that poisons communities far beyond Venezuela’s borders. When drugs are shipped to destroy families, when criminal networks are exported and empowered, that is not “politics as usual.” That is aggression — just delivered through proxies, pipelines, and chaos. For years, critics insisted the United States should simply absorb the consequences: the fentanyl and cocaine pipelines, the gangs, the destabilization, the human misery — while Washington looked the other way. And under the Biden administration — often remembered as one of the most incompetent eras of border enforcement — this threat was allowed to metastasize. The result was predictable: more crime, more grief, more families paying the price. So no — this is not a moment for handwringing. This is a moment for clarity. The operation should be celebrated, not condemned. President Donald Trump, the Pentagon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and everyone involved in planning and executing the mission deserve praise for acting where others hesitated. And here is the masterstroke: Maduro was captured alive. Not eliminated. Alive — so he can talk. So he can testify. So he can expose the networks, the financiers, the facilitators, and the political allies who helped keep this criminal enterprise afloat across Latin America. If you understand how transnational regimes survive, you understand why that matters: information is a weapon, and truth can dismantle what bombs cannot. It’s already obvious that the regime’s friends — those who cheered Venezuela’s dictatorship and treated it as a partner — are rattled. They should be. Because the era of impunity is ending, and the hemisphere is watching what accountability looks like when it is backed by resolve. Congratulations, President Trump. Congratulations, United States of America. May this be a turning point for the free world — and for every nation that has been held hostage by criminals wearing suits. God bless America.

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