No. of Recommendations: 4
The Iraq op demonstrated that NeoCons care not one whit about the countries they invade, nor do they care one whit about our guys who are maimed or killed in their wars.
Probably not, but they like good optics rather than bad optics. The Iraq op didn't demonstrate that they didn't care about those things, just that they were naive and unprepared - they genuinely believed things would work out great. I have no doubt that the Administration went into this similarly believing that everything would work out - that Rodriguez and the military would be immediately cowed into subservience in the face of our might. Jury's still out on that.
But more to the original point, it's hard to imagine that Trump really wants oil prices to be higher. He doesn't personally benefit from higher oil prices, after all. If you want to look at the Venezuelan operation through the lens of oil, it makes much more sense that Trump (if not others in the Administration) viewed is as a chance for him to get de facto control of the largest oil reserves on earth and extract favors/money from the oil companies as he doled it out to favored interests. Taking it offline - so that no one gets any goodies and the oil companies benefit without him having a role - doesn't really fit into his modus operandi. He gains if he's the gatekeeper for Venezuelan oil, but he gets nothing if there's just a supply shock to global oil markets.
