This weekend, the capture of Nicolás Maduro didn’t close a chapter in Venezuela — it ripped one open. History tells us exactly where this movie goes: swagger first, strategy never. Venezuela isn’t just another “bad guy taken off the board”; it’s an oil-soaked, politically fractured, economically shattered country where outside powers think force can substitute for understanding. That’s how Iraq started. That’s how Vietnam metastasized. And now, under Donald Trump, America is once again flirting with the delusion that you can arrest a dictator, flip a switch, pump the oil, and call it victory. You can’t. You get insurgencies, regional blowback, endless commitments, and a war that exists not because it protects Americans — but because oil, ego, and imperial muscle memory demand it. Welcome to the next forever war, this time in our own hemisphere, where the lessons of the past are ignored, the bill always comes due, and the exit strategy is once again a shrug.

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Rick Wilson is on X at @TheRickWilson, on Bluesky at @TheRickWilson.bsky.social, and you can check out Rick's Substack at therickwilson.substack.com. You can check out more of LP's work at www.lincolnproject.us and on X at @ProjectLincoln.