The midnight extraction of Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela was a tactical triumph. Gen. Stanley McChrystal does not dispute that. What he disputes is the lesson Washington drew from it - that complex geopolitical problems can be solved with a single, spectacular raid.
McChrystal, who led Joint Special Operations Command for five years in Iraq, told the New York Times columnist David French that the Venezuela mission "demonstrated extraordinary competence that night, but not much changed," as "Hvylya" reports. "I don't think that we actually demonstrated the ability to change the facts on the ground to any extent."
The problem, in McChrystal's view, is that special operations raids are inherently high-risk - and that the word "high-risk" is routinely misunderstood. "We say, 'Well, they're high risk, but they always work.' No, they don't. That's what makes them high risk," he said.
McChrystal traced a direct escalation path from the Venezuela operation to the current war with Iran. Early in his second term, President Trump discovered that threatening countries - Canada, Greenland - carried no political cost. Striking drug boats in the Caribbean was muscular but inconsequential. The Maduro raid crossed a threshold. "I think he got seduced by one of the things I mentioned - the idea that you can do something on the cheap if you're clever enough," McChrystal said.
The other factor, McChrystal argued, was Israel. The Oct. 7 attacks created a dynamic in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed to expand Israel's security posture and "do away with the boogeyman, which was Iran." Those objectives aligned with Trump's own instincts, and McChrystal believes the president "was swept up in it."
Previously, "Hvylya" reported on a classified DOJ memo that showed the Pentagon operating at the edge of legal authority during the Caribbean strikes.