Commentary: Cheers abroad, doubts at home

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The fallout from the U.S. action in Venezuela is revealing a sharp divide—between how Venezuelans are responding, and how Washington is. Here’s WORLD commentator Cal Thomas.

Venezuelan communities around the world are celebrating today—gathering in exile neighborhoods, waving flags, and cheering the removal of longtime dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a surprise U.S. operation.

For many Venezuelans, this was not regime change in the abstract. It was the end of a man who presided over economic collapse, political repression, and the transformation of a once-prosperous country into a narco-state.

AUDIO: Thank God a president who supports us came to power … The important thing is they want to support us.

What has been striking, though, is not the reaction among Venezuelans—but the reaction here at home.

Several congressional Democrats—and a few Republicans—are now moving to block any further U.S. military action, invoking the War Powers Act. Senator Tim Kaine has said he’s hoping to force a vote.

Even though Republicans control the Senate, Kaine can do that because War Powers resolutions are considered “privileged.” That means they can bypass leadership, skip the usual bottlenecks, and force every senator to go on the record.

KAINE: Maduro was a bad guy, but the U.S. shouldn’t be at war in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Nigeria, or anywhere else, if Congress doesn’t have the guts to debate it and vote on it.

In other words, this is not symbolic. It is designed to compel a public yes-or-no vote on whether the United States was right to act.

Kaine is not acting alone. He has backing from Republicans including Rand Paul of Kentucky and Todd Young of Indiana—an unusual coalition that all but guarantees this debate will play out in full view.

The problem is that the argument against the operation collapses under scrutiny.

The first sentence of the federal indictment against Maduro reads this way: For over 25 years, leaders of Venezuela abused positions of public trust and corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States. That is not rhetoric. That is a criminal charge.

Even The Washington Post, no ally of President Trump, called Maduro’s removal “a major victory for American interests,” noting that just hours before the raid, Maduro had been meeting with Chinese officials—after years of backing from Russia, Cuba, and Iran.

So here is the question senators will be voting on:

Is it acceptable for America’s adversaries to prop up a dictator who poisons our streets with narcotics—but unacceptable for the United States to remove him?

Opposition leader María Corina Machado welcomed the news, writing that the time for freedom had come, and that Maduro would face international justice for crimes against Venezuelans and others.

Now comes the harder part.

President Trump says the United States—and American oil companies—will help “run” Venezuela for a time. Whether that works will depend not on slogans, but on legitimacy: the support of Venezuela’s military and its people.

Maduro’s trial in New York may draw headlines. But the real test comes next—whether freedom, law, and stability actually take hold.

And senators will have to decide whether they believe removing a narco-dictator was an abuse of power—or a necessary act of national defense.

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

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