A Good Riddance, but a Disquieting One

Nicolás Maduro and his wife are escorted in New York, Jan. 5.Nicolás Maduro wasn't the president of Venezuela but an illegitimate head of state, brutal and criminal, whose presence was ruinous for his country and its people. No good person mourns his fall.Beyond that, some points: The U.S. military reversed the script. After news broke Saturday of Mr. Maduro's removal, gone was the picture you keep in your head of the slovenly withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was replaced by a predawn raid that was brilliantly executed and valiant. High stakes, high pressure, every piece of the machine had to work for the whole thing to work, and it did. One hundred fifty warplanes from 20 locations, a successful cyberattack that turned off Caracas's lights, Russian-built air defenses taken out. The New York Times reported on the pilot of the first helicopter in the assault, who was hit in the leg three times when the MH-47 Chinook came under fire, kept flying, and struggled to stay aloft. He and the co-pilot stuck the landing, army commandos poured out, there was an intense firefight with Mr. Maduro's security. Many U.S. troops were brave, all were professional, none were lost.Can competence be moving? Yes.The decision to go in was Trumpian in its boldness, Trumpian in its blur-he has ad-libbed and free associated about his strategic reasoning a lot but never issued a truly formal and persuasive statement, as if he didn't trust his own reasons or didn't trust others' ability to understand them. It was Trumpian too in the sense that after the military success it all looks ad hoc and throwntogether, and maybe ill thought through in the long term.No one knows what's next.