I first became aware of Venezuela when I was about 6.

I received a board game for Christmas that involved moving cargo from one international port to another. It was a great way to learn about international ports, one of which was Maracaibo, from which the country exports its oil.

Then, of course, when I was a little older, I got Risk. Venezuela is one of the key locations in the game of global conquest, the gateway between North and South America. 

In later years, when I would play with family, my daughter and my brother would constantly battle over the spot, stacking the plastic soldiers in the country and on its borders. If I’m not mistaken, the last Risk winner got a small Venezuelan flag – i think my daughter has it now.

While we’re mentioning Risk, another key location is Greenland, the bridge between North America and Europe. Like Venezuela, it seems like a lot of the action in the game takes place on those two spots.

You would have hoped that grown adults, ranging in age from their 50s to just shy of 80, got their desire for world domination or massive cargo fortunes out of their system by the end of adolescence.

But then again, can you imagine a young Donald Trump playing a board game? Or a game of any kind, other than golf for status seeking? Like the guy in the Sheryl Crow song, Trump’s “never had a day of fun in his whole life.”

A lot has been made about why Trump decided that January 2026 was the time to go after Nicholas Maduro and get the oil he thinks he and his oil executive benefactors deserve. 

He’s trying to distract from the still unreleased Epstein files. He’s trying to distract from Jack Smith’s January 6 testimony before a House committee that puts him squarely at the center of a plot to overturn the 2020 election. He’s trying to distract from the disastrous impact on the economy of his idiotic tariffs. He’s trying to distract from his declining health.

All that stuff about distractions might be worth nothing. Except for one thing.

Real people die.

It’s estimated that 80 died in the attack. Some were Venezuelan military personnel. Some apparently were Cuban advisers, bringing another country into this tussle. And some were civilians who apparently were destroyed in order to save them.

As far as we know, no Americans were killed. It would have been a real botch job if there had been,

In the reaction to the raid, people in both parties have talked about how it’s good Maduro is no longer in power. I’m sick of hearing it.

Yeah, Maduro is a bad guy. So is Vladimir Putin. So is Muhammad Bin Salaam. So is Benjamin Netanyahu. So is Kim Jong Il. 

And so is Donald Trump. If you think he’s any better than Maduro, you’re deceiving yourself. If anything Trump is enabling other bad guys with his recklessness, his contempt for civility and his overwhelming greed.

People in both parties praised the U.S. military for its professionalism. That’s also crap.

The United States military was in about as much danger in the raid on Venezuela as your kid is playing “Call of Duty.” Somebody in Venezuela sold old Maduro and led the CIA and the military to him. 

If you’re a military member who participated in this, ask yourself if you think you warrant the same honor as somebody who defused an IED in Afghanistan or was rescued from a downed  helicopter in Iraq. The Venezuelan raid was like shooting fish in a barrel.

It is not valor to fight someone who hasn’t fired a shot at you. 

That’s something every member of the military needs to keep in mind if stupidity’s reign goes unchecked and the forces of this country are used to capture Greenland. Or Cuba. Or Mexico. Or Canada. Or anywhere else. 

Doing so would be a war crime. You would be accountable to the civilized people of the world. And, if you believe, to your God.

People have lives. They have hopes. They have ambitions. They have love for their families.

They are not chips or squares or blocks or little figures on a game board. They are not incidental. This isn’t Risk or some shipping game.

It’s time for these sugar-hyped manchildren to grow up. Particularly the nearly 80-year-old one in the White House. 

It’s making everyone’s life miserable.