The lightning-fast Saturday morning raid by U.S. special operations forces that pulled Nicols Maduro out of his Caracas compound and left dozens of his Cuban and Venezuelan protectors dead has shattered a host of left-wing narratives about American power, Cuban prowess, and the realities of modern counterterror and counterinsurgency warfare.
According to RedState, the joint operation by Army 1st Special Operations DetachmentDelta (commonly known as Delta Force) and U.S. Army Rangers not only removed the former Venezuelan strongmandescribed by many on the right as the former illegitimate president of Venezuela and current U.S. inmatebut also exposed just how deeply embedded Cuban security personnel were in propping up his regime.
The raid immediately triggered outrage and disbelief across the international left, as well as among a small but vocal segment of the so?called Qatar-funded right, who refused to accept that Maduro and his wife could be snatched out of bed and spirited away with nothing left behind but a stack of dead Cubans.
When Cubas ruling Communist Party announced two days of official mourning for 32 members of Maduros Cuban security force and published their photographs, the reaction from conservative observers was blunt: Just another good spinoff from the Maduro raid: those dead bodyguards? Cubanos. Like we have said for years, Cuba is the source of much of Latin America's destabilization.
Hardline leftists and regime apologists, however, scrambled to cast doubt on the operations effectiveness and on the reported Cuban casualties, insisting that such a clean, high?tempo assault could not have unfolded without massive American losses or widespread civilian deaths.
Here, the skepticism of superannuated British communist George Galloway became emblematic of a broader refusal on the left to acknowledge that elite U.S. forces could dismantle a supposedly formidable Cuban?Venezuelan security bubble in a matter of minutes.
Galloway and others scoffed at the notion that Cuban special forces could be so decisively overmatched, prompting one pointed rejoinder circulating on social media: or, hear me out here, Cuban special forces are a joke.
On Tuesday, The Washington Postno friend of the Trump administrationpublished a detailed account of the aftermath, and its reporting largely confirmed what conservative outlets and military analysts had already suggested about the scale and precision of the strike.
The U.S. government assesses that about 75 people were killed during Saturdays military raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro, including dozens of fatalities that resulted from a gun battle at his compound in Caracas, according to officials familiar with the matter.
One person said that at least 67 people were killed in the predawn strike, while another said that about 75 to 80 people were left dead. The officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issues sensitivity, said the assessments account for Venezuelan and Cuban security forces as well as civilians caught in the fray. The figures roughly match an estimate that Venezuelan officials have shared in recent days.
The Post further noted that The sizable death toll adds meaning to President Donald Trumps public remarks that the operation he approved was effective but very violent.
For an administration often accused by its critics of reckless rhetoric, the numbers suggest that Trumps description was, if anything, understated given the density of hostile forces surrounding Maduro and the complexity of an urban assault in a hostile capital.
According to the breakdown cited in the reporting, the casualties included a significant contingent of Cuban personnel, underscoring Havanas long?standing role as the security backbone of leftist regimes across Latin America.
According to the article, the casualties break out like this. Thirty-two Cubans were killed.
Cuban state media and regime?aligned outlets have since confirmed that Cuban military personnel killed in the Venezuela operation ranged in age from 26 to 67, with many in their 40s-60s, per official reports. This reflects experience: higher ranks like colonels and majors often require years of service, common in elite or security units worldwide,.
Among the dead was the senior commander of the Cuban detail, a man whose career illustrates how deeply intertwined Cuban security services are with both regional repression and high?profile international events.
????Identificado!! Coronel Humberto Alfonso Roca, unos de los militares cubanos fallecidos en Venezuela tena 67 aos y formaba parte del cinturn de seguridad de Nicols Maduro. Se le haba visto tambin escoltando al Papa Francisco o al propio Jhon Kerry durante su visita.
Identify!!
Colonel Humberto Alfonso Roca, one of the Cuban soldiers who died in Venezuela... he was 67 years old and was part of Nicols Maduro's seat belt.
He had also been seen escorting Pope Francis or John Kerry himself during his visit to Havana.
The odd reference to Roca as part of Maduros seat belt appears to be a translation quirklikely intended to mean security cordon or protective ringbut the substance is clear: a 67?year?old Cuban colonel, trusted enough to guard the Pope and a former U.S. secretary of state, died defending a socialist dictator from American special operators.
Nor were the Cuban dead merely ceremonial bodyguards; at least one had direct combat experience in some of the worlds most volatile theaters, fighting on the side of Moscow and its proxies.
Tra i 32 cubani uccisi in Venezuela durante la cattura di Maduro c'era un nativo dell'Avana, Cuba, di nome Roberto Manuel Martinez, che in precedenza aveva combattuto a fianco delle forze russe nella regione del Donbass in Ucraina e in Siria con Wagner. Spiaze??.
Among the 32 Cubans killed in Venezuela during Maduro's capture was a native of Havana, Cuba, named Roberto Manuel Martinez, who had previously fought alongside Russian forces in the Donbass region of Ukraine and Syria with Wagner.
This revelation reinforces what conservatives have long argued: the HavanaCaracasMoscow axis is not an abstract talking point but a concrete network of personnel, training, and operational cooperation that stretches from Latin America to Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
On the Venezuelan side, regime officials have admitted that at least 24 of their own soldiers were killed, though U.S. assessments suggest the true number is closer to 40, reflecting the intensity of the firefight around Maduros residence.
There were reports that two women were killed. Given the lack of reports of civilian casualties, these were probably soldiers.
For observers accustomed to the lefts reflexive accusations of indiscriminate U.S. force, one of the most striking aspects of the operation is what did not happen: there has been no credible claim of mass civilian casualties, despite the heavy exchange of fire and the dense urban environment.
The shocking data point, at least for me, was that anytime Israel fires a round of 5.56mm ball in Gaza, it will kill 97 kids, 17 expectant mothers, and 22 journalists, in this case, there was no claim of civilian casualties made by Venezuela while fessing up to a couple of dozen dead soldiers.
The contrast is telling: when a Western or allied democracy like Israel conducts precision operations, left?wing activists and media outlets routinely inflate or distort casualty figures to paint a picture of wanton brutality, yet in this instance, even a hostile socialist regime has been forced to concede that the dead were overwhelmingly combatants.
At a Saturday press conference, President Trump and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Caine emphasized that no Americans were killed and that no U.S. equipment was lost, a remarkable outcome given the scale and stakes of the mission.
While President Trump and Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Caine made it clear at Saturday's press conference that no Americans were killed and no equipment was lost, the issue of those injured was not addressed. We now have the answer to that question.
Seven members of the assault force were injured. Five of those have returned to duty. Two are at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Brooke AMC is the only War Department hospital with a certified Level I Trauma Center. None of this means the men were seriously injured. Brooke AMC was selected in advance as the hospital for casualties; anyone would be sent there, regardless of the severity of their wounds or injuries. At this time, nothing more is known about the two hospitalized soldiers.
The limited number of wounded, combined with the absence of fatalities and the preservation of all equipment, underscores the professionalism and overwhelming tactical superiority of the U.S. assault force, especially when contrasted with the aging, politically loyal but operationally degraded Cuban and Venezuelan units they faced.
This brings us back to Galloways puzzlement and the broader mythos surrounding Cuban military prowess, a myth that has lingered on the left since the Cold War despite Havanas steady decline into economic ruin and internal repression.
The Cuban armed forces are crap. They have deteriorated from the fairly brutal force in the 1980s that wreaked havoc in Central America and East Africa. The Cubans fought a very competent South African Army to a standstill at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola. The battle was fought intermittently between 14 August 1987 and 23 March 1988 and involved artillery, attack aircraft, and attack helicopters. Now it is a typical Third World thuggery that is only useful for suppressing dissent among a cowed and unarmed populace.
Whatever limited battlefield competence Havana once possessed has been hollowed out by decades of economic mismanagement, ideological rigidity, and the regimes reliance on intimidation rather than merit to staff its security services.
By contrast, With Delta, you get men who would be classified as world-class athletes, honed to a razor's edge by constant training and deployments. Open source literature by Delta veterans indicates each member of one of the assault squadrons is going to fire hundreds of rounds of ammunition each week. That number climbs into the thousands during peak training times.
This is how they clear buildings. Note, the blue muzzles and magazines indicate they are using simulated ammunition. The quality of the equipment and training facility, along with the teamwork, means this is a Tier 1 special forces unit.
Watching professionals perform Free Flowing CQB is about as good as it gets. These are not your average operators.
The disparity is not merely technological or financial; it is cultural and institutional, rooted in a U.S. military ethos that prizes excellence, relentless training, and mission focus over ideological loyalty and regime theatrics.
From the available roster and age profiles, it appears that much of Maduros immediate security detail consisted of older Cuban officersmen in their 40s, 50s, and even 60swho may have found the nightlife of Caracas more appealing than the decaying austerity of Havana.
From the roster, it seems clear that Maduro's security detail was at least partially composed of older officers who found Caracas nightlife more fun than Havana's. As I laid out in the timeline in You Don't Have to Like It to Admire the Tactical and Political Mastery of Trump's Maduro Coup RedState, by the time the sound of explosions registered on Maduro's brain, Delta had landed and was on their way to his bag him. Most of his security force was undoubtedly asleep, and many were probably dead before they perceived what was happening.
For all the lefts romanticizing of revolutionary militaries and socialist solidarity, the Maduro raid has laid bare a harsher reality: aging Cuban apparatchiks and regime loyalists are no match for a modern, highly trained, and ruthlessly efficient Western special operations force acting under clear political authority.
The operations casualty figures, the absence of civilian deaths, the minimal American injuries, and the swift extraction of a dictator long shielded by Havanas security apparatus collectively demonstrate not only tactical mastery but also the strategic value of American power when wielded decisively in defense of freedom and against authoritarian entrenchment.
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