This past Sunday, much of the US public probably learned for the first time that their government had troops in Libya, as the military announced it was temporarily pulling them out. The US was withdrawing troops due to the advance of forces led by a rebel general aligned with the country’s rival government in the east, causing a spike in violence south of Tripoli.

For many, the news will also be a reminder that US intervention and regime change in foreign lands rarely have a pat, happy ending. For a time, Obama’s illegal Libyan adventure, launched and maintained through 2011 without congressional authorization and later reprised through some highly dubious legal reasoning, was considered a poster child for Obama’s concept of “smart power,” a case study of regime change done right. Since then, nearly every major piece of news out of the country — from the way it became a launching pad for extremist violence elsewhere in the region to the emergence of slave markets in the country to its status as a safe haven for ISIL — seemed to serve as yet another lesson why toppling a foreign government almost never does more good than harm.

The worst part is, many of those who cheered on or even orchestrated that disaster don’t appear to have learned that lesson — at least not if their stances on Venezuela are anything to go by.