Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

Information that is known to be wrong is still useful. The immediate talking points on both sides reveal quite a bit if you can read between the lines. Everyone is lying but the lies themselves are revealing.

> A lot of Venezuelans are happy about it.

Which Venezuelans? I ask because this exact same argument was used to justify the many failed assassination attempts, the Bay of Pigs debacle and sanctions on Cuba where many Cuban Americans were anti-Castro.

Now that might've been true but consider the source: many Cubans in America fled when Batista was ousted or in response to that. A famous example of that is Rafael Cruz, the father of Senator Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz famously said he hates communism because his father was tortured... by Batista [1]. And it's a failure in journalism that he wasn't challenged and lambasted for this idiotic take.

There are a lot of Venezuealsn in the US who justifiably fled the chaos there. But why was it chaotic? The US will try and tell you it's because of Maduro. But what about the sanctions? As a reminder, sanctions are a nice way of starving "we're goign to starve you and deny you medicine in the hopes you do what we want to the administration we can't otherwise topple".

Also, the US doesn't actually care about any of the crimes they accuse Maduro of. This is the same country who deposed Allende and installed Pinochet into Chile, who was a brutal dictator. That too was about resources. Oh and let's not forget Iran, who had their democratically elected government deposed to install yet another brutal dicator, the Shah, in 1953, again for oil. Or the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. The list goes on. This happens so much there's a Wikipedia page on it [2].

So, for anyone who celebates this (and I mean this generally, not at the commenter I'm responding to), you will see no benefit for this. A few billionaires will get richer, probably. The US was probably pour countless billions into supporting some puppet, probably Machado but we'll see. And I would be surprised if the lives of Venezuelans gets any better.

And if the lives of Venezuelans does actually get better, it's probably by lifting sanctions and you should be asking why we were starving them in the first place.

As a reminder, the US knows the effects of sanctions. When confronted by a report on sanctions killing 500,000 Iraqi children in 1996, then UN Ambassador and later Secretary of State responded [3]:

> “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima,” asked Stahl, “And, you know, is the price worth it?”

> “I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I2AdbLDVb0Q

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/25/lets-remember-m...

Few hours later: "US oil companies will fix Venezuela's "broken infrastructure" and "start making money for the country", Trump added"

Obviously anyone with common sense understands that the above translates to exporting oil to the US. Just like that, a lot of noise about democracy goes out of the window.

Claim: according to any sensible definition of international law, this action was illegal. See [1] for example.

Would anyone care to offer a genuinely held counter argument? Preferably based on legal expertise.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/03/is-there-any-l...

Good one, can you steelman the Epstein files or Nazi Germany next please?