Comment by amanaplanacanal

> Something like 50% of the population of the world live under rulers who were not democratically elected. Should the US taxpayers fund all of their removals?

If it's in our interest, absolutely. Venezuela nationalized (which is a nice way to say they stole) American oil interests and companies decades ago, has assisted Russia in flouting US sanctions, and has in part enabled the drug cartels. Each of those things cost us money. We're also getting a ton of immigrants from Venezuela that we have to spend money dealing with. Venezuela could also be a much better trading partner for us in the future with a liberal democratic society. All of that is directly in the best interest for the US. Believe it or not, sometimes our interests lie outside our borders.

Isolationism is a failed policy by every nation that tries it, and this is something that used to be taught to every school child in America about our past policies. It's a shame those lessons seem to have been forgotten by our people.

> On top of that, removing a ruler without any plan for follow-up frequently makes things worse, not better. We seem to have already forgotten that removing the leadership of Iraq led to the rise of ISIS and its horrifying consequences.

This is absolutely true. You have to destroy the security forces as well, and support the elected democratic leadership. We may fail to do so in this case.