America Just Proved the Doomers Dead Wrong About Our Military

We spend so much time worrying about America’s decline that we forget what we’re still capable of when we get out of our own way.

Friday night reminded us.

**When Precision Matters More Than Politics**

Look, I’m not diving headfirst into whether the Venezuela operation was strategically sound or what it means for Trump’s foreign policy vision. That’s a different conversation for a different day. Right now, I want to talk about something we don’t get to celebrate nearly enough: American military excellence.

The operation took a few hours. Just a few hours to seize control of an entire country and capture its dictator. Think about that for a second.

Months of planning preceded the strike. Our warships surrounded Venezuela while a CIA team infiltrated the country, learning everything about Nicolás Maduro. His schedule. His habits. Even his pets’ names, for crying out loud. Trump gave Maduro one last chance to surrender peacefully. Maduro said no. So Trump gave the order at 10:46 p.m. Friday to launch “Operation Absolute Resolve.”

What happened next was, frankly, surgical.

At least 150 aircraft swept through Venezuelan skies within minutes. They bombed military installations, knocked out air defense systems, provided real-time surveillance, and delivered elite fighters to their targets. Delta Force had trained repeatedly on a mock-up of Maduro’s compound. They breached it around 1 a.m. The operators even brought blowtorches in case Maduro made it to his steel safe room.

He didn’t make it that far.

By 3:30 a.m., U.S. forces were out of Venezuela with their target in custody. Several troops sustained injuries, but all are recovering. Mission accomplished doesn’t even begin to cover it.

**We’ve Still Got It**

This wasn’t even our first masterclass this year. Remember “Operation Midnight Hammer”? Seven B-2 stealth bombers flew 18 hours from Missouri to Iran. They refueled multiple times midair, dropped bunker busters on Iran’s nuclear facilities, then flew straight home. The entire mission lasted about 37 hours from wheels up to wheels down.

You know what’s remarkable about both operations? They worked exactly as planned.

After Afghanistan’s catastrophic withdrawal, I had doubts. We all did. The DEI mandates filtering through military leadership. Recruitment numbers in the gutter. Those bizarre drag queen recruitment videos. Lloyd Austin looking like a discount Darth Vader in his COVID mask. Mass firings over vaccine mandates. It was reasonable to wonder if we’d lost our edge.

Turns out we hadn’t lost anything. We just needed to remember what winning looks like.

**What Happens When You Get Politics Out of the Way**

Here’s the thing about military operations: they succeed when you have clear objectives, solid planning, and leaders focused on the mission instead of optics. When you let warriors be warriors instead of social experiments. When you prioritize capability over checking boxes.

The Venezuela and Iran operations prove that our military infrastructure, our training, and our people are still world-class. The problem was never the troops or even most of the officers. The problem was leadership more concerned with political correctness than operational readiness.

Strip away the nonsense, give competent commanders clear goals, and watch what happens. It’s almost like the principles that built the greatest military in human history still work when you actually apply them.

I’ve got plenty of questions about what comes next in Venezuela. What’s our exit strategy? How long do we stay? What happens to Maduro? Who takes over? These are legitimate concerns that deserve serious debate.

But none of those questions diminish what our military just accomplished. In a world that constantly tells us America’s best days are behind us, that we’re too divided and too weak to compete with rising powers, our armed forces just delivered a reminder.

We’re still number one. And it’s not even close.

The doomers and declinists can keep wringing their hands about American weakness. Meanwhile, our military will keep doing what it does best: achieving the impossible and making it look routine.

That’s worth celebrating, even if just for a moment.

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