Light infantry can defeat mechanized forces with artillery and air support. Look at the Lebanon War of 2006.
 

I've bolded the important differences.

For starters: "small arms infantry" is not "light infantry".

Venezuelan oil has been extracted for over 100 years. Patents last 20 – 30 years in most countries (in the USA it is 21 years).
 

Maybe Chavez and Maduro are really Alien zoologists on a research trip to earth making an experiment on human (they actually classified us as naked apes) social behavior. (I don’t know if this is what actually happened, but it’s a possibility).
 

This forum is about the ongoing attempts at regime-changing in Venezuela.

A recent example of the American promotion of "democracy on the march" is Ukraine. https://www.rt.com/op-ed/443447-ukraine-thuggery-corruption-gangsterism/

No one tried to refute the corrupt character of the former Ukrainian president Mr. Yanukovitch. But he was democratically elected by Ukrainian people. In 2014, the ziocons had won (the same crowd that you seem have no problems with, judging from your posts). What has been going in Ukraine since the zionized/nazified "liberation:"

Zionists and banderites have (re)established a tight collaboration: https://www.partiantisioniste.com/en/news/the-neo-nazi-ukraine-allied-with-zionism-en.html

A civil war has been initiated under a criminally competent watch of the former CIA Director Brennan. https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/21/a-coming-russia-ukraine-war/

The level of corruption has increased, while Ukraine has been living off the international bank's tranches and squandering her natural resources to Monsanto and such: https://slavyangrad.org/2015/06/25/black-earth-and-the-struggle-for-ukraines-future/

The young and educated have been fleeing Ukraine: https://www.stalkerzone.org/mass-emigration-where-ukrainians-go-to-flee-the-consequences-of-the-wests-maidan/

Old people have been suffering: https://www.stalkerzone.org/ukrainian-pensioners-about-the-fruits-of-post-maidan-ukraine-bury-us-alive-we-have-no-life/

The Russian language has been banned: https://www.rt.com/news/438852-ukraine-russian-culture-banned/

Again, what is the source of your infatuation with the chosen boy Guaido?

If you take looted or stolen wealth you should give it back to the rightful owner.
 

Many relatives of Hugo Chavez held or hold political positions.
 

Venezuelan people have elected Maduro, not the ridiculous and treasonous Guaido.
If your chosen boy is so good, why did the Venezuelans show no support for him during the legitimate election process? No wonder that the chosen boy Guaido has promptly gone to pledge his allegiance to the zionized international banking cabal.

Replies: @tac

How does it improve the living of the Venezuelan people when Chavistas use the looted money to buy foreign luxury goods or use looted real estate for their enjoyment?
 

For me the conclusion is that the Chavistas have failed the Venezuelan people.
 

Replies: @Vidi, @tac, @Matthias Eckert

That "LOL" doesn't mean disagreement - I very much agree, your pithy response just made me laugh.

I don't subscribe the socialist agenda, but I am mindful of the critique that the US is exacerbating an issue that is the internal business of Venezuelans. I support this executive, I support the US. I support our military and intelligence community.

However, I am loathe to stay silent about another needless intervention, that violates the sovereignty of another state, that poses no threat to the US or in violation of some humanitarian wrong being perpetrated --- and in that the magnitude of which isn't a mist drop case for forceful intervention in Venezuela.

Exactly. Thanks

For example imho Pinochet would have successfully overthrown Allende in Chile even without US support"

This is called softening of arguments and doubt and making room for possible exoneration of US.

Tomorrow we will hear that Haiti's Aristides would have been forced by Haitian to board plane and leave

Tomorrow we will know that Honduran president would have been anyways sent to the pasture of retirement by some military without Clinton's ( Mrs this time ).

"But even if you believe the Venezuelan elections of 2018 weren’t rigged..."

-- Tell us, Matthias Eckert, what Venezuelan elections have been won by certain Mr. Guaido? What exactly makes this miserable puppet into a legitimate contestant to Maduro? http://thesaker.is/venezuela-the-straw-that-breaks-the-empires-back/

the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), the extended arm of the CIA, has for the last two decades trained funded and infiltrated ‘traitor’ agents into Venezuela, with the goal to assist the opposition to foment unrest, to carry out assassinations and other ‘false flags’, and to simply create chaos and unrest. However, some of these agents are also lodged in Venezuela’s financial institutions, as the Fifth Column, where they sabotage – often with threats – any economic policies that could rescue Venezuela from its economic predicament.
 

Both Chavez and Maduro had very little leeway of doing differently what they have already done. Sanctions, boycotts, outside money manipulations, driving inflation to astronomical levels and constant smear propaganda, these predicaments are biting hard. The US has a firm grip on Venezuela’s dollar dependency.

Last week, Washington confiscated about US$ 23 billion Venezuela’s reserve money in US banks, blocked them from use by the legitimate Maduro government, and, instead, handed them to their US-appointed, puppet, never elected, “president”, Juan Guaidó. – He is now able to use Venezuela’s money in his US-EU-and Lima-Group supported “shadow” government. Will he dare?
 

How come that the most corrupt, amoral, and hypocritical profiteers of all stripes have been making "righteous" noises about "very bad" Maduro while supporting the agnus dei Guaido? The puppet has zero political capital in Venezuela but enjoys the well-established connections to the CIA and State Dept. http://thesaker.is/venezuela-the-straw-that-breaks-the-empires-back/

It seems that you are perfectly content with the US choice of the pliable and ambitious idiot that has never won Venezuelan elections and thus is protected from the accusations in "rigged elections."

Replies: @tac

I suggest that you actually read the report, again;

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2018/12/21/americas-oil-and-gas-reserves-double-with-massive-new-permian-discovery/#c9f319a2c91e

That estimate doesn't even factor in other massive locations like Alaskan & offshore regions which are confidently assumed to hold enormous quantities of oil & gas.

If oil was getting more rare & truly expensive then rules of economics which insist that the final cost of it reflect that rarity and expense.

The world is truly awash in oil. Peak Oil is an old, disproven canard.

https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/we-are-not-running-out-of-oil-earth-produces-crude/

Replies: @bluedog

As to you PS... What do you say about "that's a typical Labour/Conservative/Liberal policy" or "I prefer Georgian to Victorian furniture"?

Every language has its peculiar rules. Condemning them is worthy only of a junior high school kid.

Exactly. How that in 20 years the Chavistas have not build a single refinery ?

Replies: @annamaria, @Vidi

Same goes for almost anything else. Why does Venezuela still have gold deposited in the US and Britain? it's not like these never seized (not to say stole) foreign assets before.

Just because the Chavistas are enemies of the American oligarchy doesn't mean the aren't oligarchs themselves.

ps. That Anglo habit to start nationalities with a capital letter even when used as adjective is an insult to logic

Replies: @Wizard of Oz, @Hibernian, @Ovidiu

Blaming the victims of US aggression.

Replies: @Matthias Eckert

"This interview is a whitewash for the Venezuelan government ... They had 20 years ..."

-- You are not a child, aren't you? How about the industrial base in the mighty US?
There is also the US infrastructure, the improvement of which requires some $4 trillion... "They" (the richest country in the world) had how many years?

Besides, the main point of the article is in a color graph showing % of votes /% of all registered voters.

Look again at the graph, carefully. What are the numbers for Mr. Guaido? Have not we seen enough of "democracy on the march" and other US-led "improvements" and "humanitarian interventions" in Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine?

Replies: @Matthias Eckert

Suppose everything you say is spot on accurate. I am unclear why I need to support meddling in their affairs.


I suspect we have plenty of corruption, malfeasance, infair practices right here at home.

Replies: @Matthias Eckert

1 “Soldiers eat out of garbage cans & their families go hungry in Venezuela while Maduro & friends live like kings & block humanitarian aid,” Mr. Rubio wrote. He then added: “The world would support the Armed Forces in #Venezuela if they decide to protect the people & restore democracy by removing a dictator.”

2

In a speech in April, when he was still White House policy chief for Latin America, Mr. Cruz issued a message to the Venezuelan military. Referring to Mr. Maduro as a “madman,” Mr. Cruz said all Venezuelans should “urge the military to respect the oath they took to perform their functions. Honor your oath.”

3
Roberta Jacobson, a former ambassador to Mexico who preceded Ms. Aponte as the top State Department official for Latin America policy, said that while Washington has long regarded the Venezuelan military as “widely corrupt, deeply involved in narcotics trafficking and very unsavory,” she saw merit in establishing a back channel with some of them

4. Mr. Tillerson raised the potential for a military coup.
“When things are so bad that the military leadership realizes that it just can’t serve the citizens anymore, they will manage a peaceful transition,” he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/americas/donald-trump-venezuela-military-coup.html

what more do you to see or hear or read before you believe that US had been hyper -focused and heavily engaged and entirely illegally to destroy Valenzuela independence form crony capitalism?

except:

The US is sitting on a veritable ocean of oil.

America’s Oil And Gas Reserves Double With Massive New Permian Discovery
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2018/12/21/americas-oil-and-gas-reserves-double-with-massive-new-permian-discovery/#60fceb432c91
exc.:
“America’s energy security just got a lot more secure. On November 28 The United States Geological Survey (USGS) published an assessment of continuous (unconventional or ‘tight’) resources in a part of the prolific Permian oil and gas basin that straddles Western Texas and Southeastern New Mexico. Located in the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation, the unproven, technically recoverable reserves are officially the largest on the planet.”

Then add in the rest of the continental US and then Alaska … oil galore.

Replies: @Vidi