Venezuela and the world will be far better off with the Maduro regime GONE

Exactly what Team Trump intends to do with (or to) Venezuela is far from clear, but it clearly wants the Maduro regime gone ASAP, and with excellent reason.

Operation Southern Spear has sunk roughly two dozen drug-cartel boats in recent weeks, while the Pentagon has now built up the largest US military presence in the region in more than three decades — with Marines as well as Navy and Air Force assets deployed not just to US territory in the region, but in allied nations such as the Dominican Republic as well as Trinidad and Tobago.

President Donald Trump even warned Saturday on Truth Social that airlines and criminals should “consider” Venezuelan airspace “closed,” though he evidently hasn’t ordered US forces to make that happen, since flights continued through at least Sunday afternoon.

Critics fume that US forces can’t know the boats they’re sinking are actually cartel ones, but experts say it’s pretty easy to tell: They’re the only ones equipped with multiple, expensive high-speed engines so they can outrun surface vessels looking to intercept drug shipments; fisherman can’t afford anything like such vessels, nor do they need them.

Meanwhile, Democrats like lefty Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen are screaming about possible “war crimes” and hoping to invoke the War Powers Act to prevent any further US action.

Without question, the regime headed by Nicolás Maduro is a menace to ordinary Venezuelans (more than 8 million have fled the country’s dire shortages, roving gangs and general chaos) and to the whole hemisphere: It’s long been deeply intertwined with the Cartel de los Soles and other international criminal organizations, smuggling fentanyl and other deadly drugs; it hosts Chinese, Russian and Iranian assets, enabling espionage and other hemisphere-wide meddling; and of course the refugees its misrule has produced are a burden on its neighbors all the way up to Canada.

And it has zero legitimacy: Maduro’s minions blatantly fixed the 2024 presidential election (and likely several before that), while opposition leader María Corina Machado this year won the Nobel Peace Prize for “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy” — at least her third global human-rights honor these last two years, a clear sign that the entire civilized world recognizes the regime’s evil.

The Trump administration plainly, and rightly, thinks it’s long past time for Maduro to go; if it does move ahead to decapitate the regime, Venezuela’s decrepit armed forces will be near-helpless to stop it: The only “combat” experience Caracas’ underpaid, desertion-ridden troops have is in firing on civilian protesters.

We expect our president would rather not actually go there; far better for Maduro and his top cronies to read the writing on the wall and flee (no doubt with some of their ill-gotten billions) to Cuba or some other ally.

Either way, decent people then have to hope that Venezuelan civil society retains the strength to rapidly return to normal order, despite the Maduro gang’s talk of a guerilla resistance.

We’d also hope that the international left would stop pretending this regime is anything more than a criminal gang; it’s long past the time the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders could credibly treat Hugo Chávez (Maduro’s late predecessor) as a fellow progressive.

Democrats may try to prevent Venezuela’s liberation out of general Trump Derangement Syndrome, but the civilized world would surely cheer.