This is illegal, immoral, unsupported by the vast majority of the US population and requiring immediate action by every US citizen and elected official.
Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
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Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
#162I think Venezuela should take this to the ICC. (The ICJ is irrelevant).
What for? The ICC is only "allowed" to take down criminals with the approval of Western govs.
Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
#163What's the desired strategic outcome here - to remove the incumbent president and his political party from power and replace it with one more favorable to US oil interests? And to do that without putting ground troops in to some Latin American Vietnam? Good luck with that.
It'll be the usual playbook: replace Maduro with a pet dictator. It won't go well for Venezuela and it's people, but since when did the USA give a damn about people?
Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
#164Before anyone starts telling us how they are attacking a legitimate president and that the people will defend it, take your time to find your closest Venezuelan (there are 8 million around the world, so don't need to look to far) and ask him how he feels about this, you will find that happy is part of their emotions.
I found two, and happy is not part of their emotions.
Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
#165A lot of talk about how the administration didn't even try to justify this, but I think that the administration actually believes they did justify it. They exist in some bubble completely un-tethered from reality. I don't know what that means for the future but it's terrifying.
It's probably just the disconnect between the two sides of american politics. On the right it's justified enough, on the left it doesn't matter what Trump says, the reaction is going to be exactly the same.
For example I'm not american and mostly on the right, and I think it's doubtful if it's legally justified (how does one legally justify a was anyways? it's extra-judicial almost by definition), but it makes a lot of sense, it aligns with realpolitik and it's morally good for several independent reasons. In particular it has a hugely disproportionate geopolitical impact, and less importantly it can bring a few million people from under a dictatorship.
As an interesting aside, I recently did a quick research on the Grenada invasion, widely spoken of as an embarrassing moment. It went... very well. They came, remove a budding dictatorship right after a coup, left in two months, and Grenada had no ill effects in the years after (both by subjective reporting, and by GDP per capita comparable to neighboring countries). The alternative would have been "do nothing", skip the reputational hit and have yet another hellhole in the region. The number of dictatorships that did well in recent history is exactly two, and neither was socialist (SK and Singapore).
Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
#166This is illegal, immoral and not supported by the vast majority of the country. Every us citizen and every elected official needs to act, now, to stop this.
Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
#167Democracy incoming
Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
#168A lot of talk about how the administration didn't even try to justify this, but I think that the administration actually believes they did justify it. They exist in some bubble completely un-tethered from reality. I don't know what that means for the future but it's terrifying.
"Justified" in what sense? Who does this administration - or indeed USA in general - answer to?
Folks there's nothing new or insane here. Countries attacked other countries all throughout human history. The surprise is when they don't.
Now it's not super hard to understand why Trump is fixated on Venezuela in terms of geopolitics. There's a decision by this admin to bolster US in the western hemisphere, possibly in preparation to coming to terms with a bipolar world split between US and China. So the US is now meddling with Canada and Greenland. Now with the shift towards the right in Latam (Milei in Argentina, Bukele in El Salvador, Kast in Chile) Trump is just pushing a few more bricks to create a more uniform American-led sphere. Plus, Venezuela was very close with the Iranians and Russians, so removing this regime surely serves some strategic goals.
Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
#169This is illegal, immoral and not supported by the vast majority of the country. Every us citizen and every elected official needs to act, now, to stop this.
> not supported by the vast majority of the country
Votes suggest otherwise.
Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
#170It's so hard to talk about this from the perspective of a venezuelan. Venezuela is under a dictatorshipt that has violated human rights massively, in Caracas (the capital) there's a prison know as El Helicoide, that's the headquarterts of the SEBIN (Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia), they are the secret police and the have arrested opposition members, reporters, human rights activists, and even family members of…
Word, the regime needs to go. That’s what most outside don’t understand.
8 million of us had to flee the country.