But you're the good guys and do that to deliver freedom and democracy so it's OK. I think you're under estimating how the world is rapidly updating their views on the US, and the lasting damage to your soft power.
This is exactly the kind of ignorant chest thumping arrogance that lead to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, destabilised the entire region, lead to the rise of IS, and eventually to streams of refugees heading for Europe. edit: tone
I can't speak for other countries, but the regime in Russia has popular support.
And if "every Venezuelan you know" is someone who immigrated because of Chavez and/or Maduro, then you have an extremely biased sample to gauge the overall mood of their populace.
That's not quite true even today (it all depends on how loud your non-support is), and was even less true prior to the war. The majority support Putin not because the alternative is prison but because they genuinely believe that he's a good leader. And they're wrong, but that's a different story.
> then you have an extremely biased sample to gauge the overall mood of their populace.
I think that if a good chunk of the people that don't agree with their government are basically forced to emigrate you don't get to turn around and say "See, everyone that remains loves the government!"
What happens if the Venezuelan people decide they want their oil profits to stay in Venezuela rather than flowing into oil company coffers? Will they have the "freedom" to choose that?
Don't get me wrong, Maduro being toppled is a positive in isolation, but it's still wait-and-see regarding what he gets replaced with.
"We’re going to have our very large US oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so" [1]
If you are talking about those that left the country... yeah, obviously they are happy. They literally left and got a better life. That's called immigration. That doesn't mean that it will be fine for those that stayed.
Let's hope Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Russia follow soon.