David Frum writes:

Because the anti-Trump side cares about fairness, many of its most prominent figures hesitate to accuse Trump of corrupt motives until sufficient evidence emerges to support the accusation. That Trump has ordered the military to seize an alleged drug-trafficking Latin American head of state barely a month after he pardoned and released a convicted drug-trafficking Latin American head of state is suspicious, to say the least. But until and unless there’s something to back those suspicions, and perhaps recalling the readiness of Trump’s regulatory agencies to retaliate against Trump-critical speech, many on the anti-Trump side deem it unwise to voice them. The possibility that U.S. armed forces could have been deployed because Trump insiders bought into a shady scheme to grab Venezuelan oil seems far-fetched—yet it may be much more grounded in reality than any learned article concocting a Trump grand strategy.

What I wonder is why Trump doesn’t pause to think about someone doing this to him. The US isn’t the only country that has a military.

Trump thrives on the ineffectiveness of his opponents. The military operation in Venezuela is a warning that Trump’s imperial ambitions are growing. He’s building himself a triumphal arch in Washington. He craves gaudy acts to justify his monument to himself. He announced his operation first on his own wacky social-media platform, then on a phone call to Fox—as if his fan base were the only part of the nation to whom the president owed an explanation for his actions. Trump’s ego poses clear and present dangers to American democracy and American world leadership. An ineffective anti-Trump movement is an indulgence that American democracy cannot afford or accept.

So let’s not be ineffective, or ineffectual either.