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Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

reuters.com

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Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

#451

Post by inglor_cz »

slg wrote: post #82

As someone old enough to have seen the US invade too many countries, I'm struck by the lack of effort put into justifying this sort of military action these days. There is going to be a lot of debate over whether this specific operation was legal and I have no idea where the courts or history will ultimately land on that decision. But the way they don't even try to convince us this is necessary anymore is a sign that…

This is a consequence of the society concentrating on its internal culture war. International politics became irrelevant to most voters; they don't really have any personal stake in it anymore, or they at least don't feel so. Their kids won't be drafted to war.

Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

#453

Post by pxmpxm »

Simon_ORourke wrote: post #147

What'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.

Maria Machado? I thought independent observers mostly agreed she won the election?

Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

#454

Post by wslh »

boramalper wrote: post #344

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Regardless of your opinion on Maduro, you can still acknowledge that the head of a sovereign state being captured in an unannounced/unnamed military operation by a superpower is wrong from a principled standpoint, and that it’s destabilising a country with 30+ million people if not the entire region.

It's hard to ignore that the country being targeted holds the world's largest oil reserves. In a global context where China has become one of the top oil importers, that makes the situation look less accidental.

Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

#455

Post by stocksinsmocks »

boramalper wrote: post #344

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Regardless of your opinion on Maduro, you can still acknowledge that the head of a sovereign state being captured in an unannounced/unnamed military operation by a superpower is wrong from a principled standpoint, and that it’s destabilising a country with 30+ million people if not the entire region.

I think heads of state bearing personal responsibility for misconduct is an excellent precedent that I would love to see applied much, much more widely. Preferably to the superpowers, especially if said leader were to say, for a totally-hypothetical example, recklessly create a massive security risk near our borders for the sole purpose of benefiting a foreign interest group… but I’ll take what I can get. I think the Sword of Damocles is missing all too often from high society. If life and death decisions, don’t come with life and death risks, then I think they become taken too lightly. I think we are too quick to insulate high society from the consequences of their actions.

Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

#457

Post by xeornet »

maztaim wrote: post #400

I'm horrible at reading between the lines, but this just smells of oil related concerns. It's not about a bad leader, it's not about drugs.

The standard playbook. If its not nuclear weapons, it's the spread of democracy, or "helping people". The global police just securing their natural resources, nothing to see here.

Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

#458

Post by JoeAltmaier »

What a publicity hound. Ratings plummeting? Nothing like a foreign war to pump the numbers.

Best it be a puny helpless country, so nobody (important) gets killed. Just some brown folk from South America, nobody cares about them.

Anything to serve the ego; absolutely no crime or moral outrage is off-limits. Long as it serves that endless pit that is ego.

Re: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

#459

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

jl6 wrote: post #446

Interesting that World War 3 never happened; instead, we smoothly transitioned to War World, where war is just something that happens all the time, randomly, intermittently, undeclared, and interminably.

I’m not so sure. This War World is very similar to the geopolitical game played by the great European - and increasingly US as well, especially in SA - powers in the 19th century. That Belle Epoque was of course what drove the global politics into the first Great War.
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