I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the situation in Venezuela is making me reconsider some of my harsh judgments of US covert operations.

Consider the following scenario:

You see what is happening in Venezuela, and say, “

we have to help those people”.

But how? You can’t do an outright invasion, it’s a sovereign country. And you don’t want to just indiscriminately drop arms in the country, resulting in widespread armed street warfare and crime. So what are your options? You could make contact with resistance groups, and train and arm some of them to fight back against the tyrannical regime.

Oh wait… we’ve done that all over the world, and it has a tendency to backfire, as many times the resistance groups wind up being just as bad as the original tyrants if not worse.

No, I’m not saying the CIA isn’t criminal from the beginning, and has good intentions. I’m saying I can see some nuance there that makes things not so black and white.