They always look so small. Authoritarian leaders brought to justice seem hugely diminished. Remember, “We got him.” In Iraq in 2003, Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, used those words to announce that the fugitive Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, had been captured hiding in a hole in Northern Iraq.
Manuel Noriega of Panama was a big-time dope dealer in chief. Surrounded by U.S. forces in Panama City in 1990, he was driven from his sanctuary in the Vatican Embassy by relentless punk rock music by artists like The Clash and Van Halen blaring 24/7 over loudspeakers.
The Panamanian dictator looked like a frazzled, homeless, crazy person by the time he surrendered. He died in a Panamanian prison 2017.
Osama bin Laden, the terror mastermind himself, the architect of 9/11, was a fragile shadow of his former self when he was finally surrounded and killed by our special operators in Pakistan. He barely made a splash when his body was committed to the deep.
Hussein, Noriega, bin Laden–three tough guys cut down to size and joined now by Nicholas Maduro. Wearing what appeared to be fluffy pajamas, the recently apprehended Venezuelan dictator sat morosely in the U.S. helicopter with his hands handcuffed, and with a barely visible DEA Agent standing behind his left shoulder, weapon at the ready.
When Attorney General Pam Bondi said of Nicholas Maduro, “he will soon face the full wrath of American justice,” it was a huge understatement.
What General Bondi could have said is that like Hussein, Noriega, and bin Laden, Nicholas Maduro is about to be diminished, demoted, demeaned, and disappear under the full weight of American military might, and our unchallenged ability to project political, judicial, and military power. Think El Chapo. What goes around has come around.
Among Maduro’s alleged crimes: the export of 250+ tons of cocaine a year into the United States, and this industrial-scale dope dealing was almost beside the point. Maduro went down because he challenged the preeminence of American power in our home hemisphere.
He squandered Venezuela’s vast oil wealth.
Once the richest nation in Latin America, Maduro and his cronies drove it into the ground. With perhaps the largest reserve of oil on earth, Venezuela’s industry was so badly run the country had to import gasoline and other petroleum products. Venezuela also made the mistake of being too cozy with the United States’ enemies. He befriended Castro of Cuba, Putin of Russia and Xi of China.
President Trump doesn’t turn to me for advice. Still, let me offer some. What he must do now, aside from vigorously prosecuting the incarcerated Nicholas Maduro in court, is to make clear to the world and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that we are not going to rob them of their oil wealth the way Maduro did, nor will we impose on Venezuela its next generation of leaders.
For now, President Trump’s daring gambit has been rewarded.
The bad guy has been captured and not a single American life was lost. If he does not get us bogged down in the day-to-day operations of a foreign country, Trump can demonstrate American hegemony in the western hemisphere.
In the 1820s, American president and founding father James Monroe made it clear to the world that this is America’s backyard and bad guys like Noriega or Maduro are not welcome. As President Trump put it, “American dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
He calls it the Don-roe Doctrine.
