Yet, by removing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Trump has repeated Bush’s mistake. In 1992, American conservative writer Michael Ledeen reportedly said: “Every 10 years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” Actually, such gratuitous demonstrations of might betray the fear that American world power is slipping. In Iraq, regime change resulted in years of deadly civil war and a costly US occupation that lasted nearly a decade. Another key difference between Bush’s war in Iraq and Trump’s in Venezuela is that Bush was a far more popular president. Bush held a 58 per cent approval rating before Iraq; Trump’s approval rating is about 38 per cent.

Source: The Irish Times January 05, 2026 12:58 UTC