24 ms·

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 unannoun

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.

casey2 9mo ago
[flagged]
dataflow 9mo ago
> Regardless of your opinion on Maduro, you can still acknowledge that the head of a sovereign state being captured (...) Note the US administration contends that he wasn't the legitimate head of state. [1] [2] [1] https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/marco-rubio-nicolas-maduro-not-president-venezuela/ https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/marco-rubio-nicolas-m... [2] I'm (obviously) being sloppy regarding head of state vs. head of government.
- delfinom 9mo ago
  Well Russia contends Zelensky isn't the legitimate head of state of Ukraine.
  - incrudible 9mo ago
    You have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to contend that Zelensky is not the democratically legitimated head of state of Ukraine. For Maduro, it's much simpler: He lost the election, yet he remained in power.
    - blell 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - incrudible 9mo ago
        > Then, he suspended the next election and no more elections have been celebrated ever since. Yes, but that may have something to do with the fact that his country was invaded and he has been at war ever since. Suspending elections for that reason is legitimate by "our" standards.
        AnimalMuppet 9mo ago
        We didn't suspend elections during World War II. We had been attacked (and overseas parts had been invaded and conquered), and we were at war. Elections still went on as normal. Even during the Civil War there were elections, even though there was fighting in some of the states that were voting.
        wiseowise 9mo ago
        > We [industrial superpower dwarfing whole axis combined, surrounded by ocean with no neighbors who can challenge us and unique geography that makes it literally impossible to invade at the time] didn't suspend election during World War II. We had been attacked [parts so insignificant compared to the whole that there was no reason to even consider delaying elections]... This is the most `ShitAmericansSay` argument ever. What's next? Poland should've held elections while being pounded from both sides? Russia had "elections" during WWI and look where it ended up.
        Hikikomori 9mo ago
        [flagged]
      - dzikimarian 9mo ago
        You forgot to add that Ukrainian opposition leader supported suspension.
      - andyjohnson0 9mo ago
        > Then, he suspended the next election Zelensky did not suspend elections. Ukraine's constitution prohibits the holding of elections under conditions of martial law. "However, martial law—imposed after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 and still in place as the war continues—has prevented elections from taking place. Under Ukrainian law, elections cannot be held while martial law is in effect to ensure continuity of governance and support the nation’s defense." [1] [1] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraines-presidential-elections-amid-war-political-legal-and-security-challenges https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraines-presidential...
    - iknowSFR 9mo ago
      Bookmark this comment because it’s going to be very relevant in a few years.
      - kcplate 9mo ago
        [flagged]
        sigmarule 9mo ago
        Seems silly to ignore that the last date in your list had an event closer to what OP is referring to than any other year, no? Considering he was already crying election fraud in 2016 you could certainly view this as a line with upwards slope…
        kcplate 9mo ago
        I’m sorry…did I miss martial law being declared in 2021? Did I miss Trump being president from 2021 through 2024?
        sigmarule 9mo ago
        You are considering them binary states while I’m considering it a continuous scale. I prefer my way.
        kcplate 9mo ago
        My preference is reality.
        sigmarule 9mo ago
        Perhaps learn how to model it, then.
        kcplate 9mo ago
    - AlecSchueler 9mo ago
      Ok, now who can do the toppling? What if China had done this?
      - incrudible 9mo ago
        Done what, exactly? Abduct Maduro?
        A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago
        Hmm, you don't see a simple connection, where China is the counterparty in this power struggle?
        AlecSchueler 9mo ago
        Yes, for example, or forcefully remove the leader of the country of your choice.
        incrudible 9mo ago
        If they had removed Maduro because he's an illegitmate autocrat funneling drugs into the US, I'd be deeply confused, considering he's on their side.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
        erkt 9mo ago
        [flagged]
      - balakk 9mo ago
        I wonder if this emboldens china to do the same to Taiwan..
        erkt 9mo ago
        China gets Taiwan without any US intervention as soon as our chip foundries have been built state side. Xi is patient.
    - elektronika 9mo ago
      Zelensky has suspended elections since Russia invaded. He hasn't had a chance to be voted out, and probably will never get one.
      - Sabinus 9mo ago
        The Ukrainian Constitution suspends elections in a State of Emergency. The State of Emergency is renewed regularly by the Ukrainian Parliament. The Ukrainian people are broadly supportive of Zelensky, who is publically open to holding elections if given the space and resources to do so. Which is a ceasefire, and some time and money.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago
    You think you are making a counter argument, but you just managed to be welcomed to the end of the thought process of this exercise as contending can be done by just about anyone. It reinforces a bad precedent.
- only-one1701 9mo ago
  I contend my net worth is actually 9 figures
  - phtrivier 9mo ago
    Case in point : if you had the biggest military in the world, and no one to credibly oppose you, you'd have a lot of arguments to convince everyone that your bank account is actually full. Lesson 1 of W.Spaniel course on international relationship is that "international order" is the longest running form of anarchy. Pray you stay on the good side of the Emperor closest to your home. It's a good thing the current emperor is old - at least we have patience and trusting biology as an option. Successions are often messy, and I don't see Emperor Trump as the kind to cautiously pick his heir.
    - xg15 9mo ago
      That's easily written if you're in the country that benefits most from that situation, not so easily in other countries. The entire post-WWII system with the UN and international law was an attempt to change this.
      - btilly 9mo ago
        That is a misunderstanding. The stated and actual purposes of the UN are different. The actual purpose was to give great powers a place to negotiate with each other, so that we wouldn't get a third world war. That is why the 5 most powerful countries were permanently put on the security council with complete veto powers.
        xg15 9mo ago
        I imagine this is the difference between how it's taught in Europe and in the US.
        btilly 9mo ago
        You imagine wrong. It was a point that I first remember seeing from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Dyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Dyer. Who is not from the US, but is an expert on the subject. It was in his documentary series War, but I don't remember which episode.
- christkv 9mo ago
  So did the EU parliament and a whole range of European countries
- jessriedel 9mo ago
  I think the (disputable) argument is that, for global stability and equilibrium reasons, there should be a general prohibition against kidnapping/assassination of de facto heads of state, regardless of whether they were legitimately elected or are dictators.
  - Muromec 9mo ago
    We are not hovever optimizing for stabilitybanymore in Kali Yuga that we are living through
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - IMTDb 9mo ago
    Companies can become « too big to fail » and dictatord can become « too powerful to fall » ?
  - close04 9mo ago
    General rules don’t apply to superpowers or the countries they protect. China, US, Russia get to do whatever their military or economic power affords them, unprovoked aggression, war crimes, terror acts. There are general rules against war crimes and they still happen day after day, under flimsy excuses. Bombed a hospital or a wedding party? There was a suspected terrorist there. White phosphorus over civilians? It was just for the smoke screen. Overthrew a government overseas? Freedom for those poor people.
    - wiseowise 9mo ago
      Russia is a regional power, though.
      - close04 9mo ago
        The definition is probably not very precise. They started a war of aggression and every other country is tiptoeing around them. Iraq was also a regional power and got a very different treatment. So the “power” line isn’t so clear. China on the other hand doesn’t get visibly involved in almost any remote conflict and they’re obviously a (if not the) superpower.
- ycombinary 9mo ago
  You know the president said that the Epstein files were a democrat hoax, right? I feel like at this stage the US administration could contend that the moon is in fact made of cheese and news agencies would respond by running news stories about the implications of this on future possible lunar missions.
  - ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
    Interesting that they felt the need to redact a hoax and even include an innocent photo of Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson that was redacted to make it look suspect.
    - ycombinary 9mo ago
      I'm so bored. Trump is a sex offender. He's also a convicted criminal. He is also completely devoid of ethics or morality. But because of the car crash that is American politics, you have to address all of this through the theatre of the set of documents associated with the world's most infamous paedophile (who also appears to be his best mate). It's exhausting.
      - ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
        Well, I'm just an onlooker, so I don't have any influence on U.S. politics. I'm just constantly astonished that the U.S. people would vote for such a charlatan. Twice.
        ycombinary 9mo ago
        Social media and tech companies are effectively helping external actors (and malicious internal actors) to break western democracy.
        ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
        Quite - that's been patently obvious since the Cambridge Analytica scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana... Ultimately, there's a war between the haves and the have-nots and one side clearly has more resources.
- gpm 9mo ago
  It's also widely acknowledged that elections in Russia are rigged, and yet the US was quite angry at Ukraine over Russia's (false, as it turned out) claim that Ukraine attacked Putin...
- kdavis 9mo ago
  The 3rd section of the 14th amendment[1] states that no person having engaged in insurrection[2] shall hold any office, civil or military, in the United States. So technically Trump isn’t a legitimate head of state either. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Section_3:_Disqualification_from_office_for_insurrection_or_rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un... [2]https://www.npr.org/2025/12/31/g-s1-104190/capitol-riot-trump-jack-smith-transcript https://www.npr.org/2025/12/31/g-s1-104190/capitol-riot-trum...
  - RemainsOfTheDay 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - andsoitis 9mo ago
    > The 3rd section of the 14th amendment[1] states that no person having engaged in insurrection[2] shall hold any office, civil or military, in the United States. So technically Trump isn’t a legitimate head of state either. Was he tried and convicted? As far as I know the powers that be instead decided for some reason to attack him on other charges (sexual misconduct, corruption, etc.)
    - derbOac 9mo ago
      The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump engaged in insurrection as a matter of fact. That is, they deemed it so obvious from the evidence presented (much of which was publicly available) that it didn't require a trial for determination. This was appealed to the US Supreme Court, who didn't rule that this wasn't true, they ruled that the 14th amendment needs to be applied by Congress for reasons of consistency across states... which sidestepped the entire issue and was a dereliction of duty in my opinion, in the sense that they are the highest court and could have ruled on the issue of insurrection, or at least required some kind of jury proceeding at that time. They basically didn't do their one job. Then Jack Smith later amassed a case about it, with grand jury approval. He ran out of time to try and convict Trump before he was elected, basically published a summary report of his case. Recently he testified before a congressional committee about it and asserted he was extremely confident Trump would have been convicted. He testified that he never consulted with Biden about the case, and asked that the rest of his materials from his investigation be publicly released. Legally speaking there is a strong argument that Trump engaged in insurrection; he's just been shielded from the consequences by political maneuvers and poor timing. Put differently, one state supreme court decided he so obviously engaged in it that it didn't require a trial. Another federal attorney presented his evidence to a grand jury and they decided he was likely to succeed if it went to trial. My personal belief is historians will look at the evidence presented and conclude that US Congress made catastrophic mistakes by not impeaching Trump the first time (for obstruction of justice first, and insurrection second), and that SCOTUS made an equally catastrophic mistake (or corrupt decision) by not ruling on insurrection as the highest federal court, either on its own or with a grand jury trial.
- xg15 9mo ago
  Honestly, I'm getting increasingly fascinated with the utterly absurd logic that states are putting into their justifications for war. You get "preemptive self defense" that urgently requires "buffer zones" on foreign territory, which then mysteriously become your own territory and have to be defended with even more buffer zones. Some Terror Regime of Literal Nazis is doing Unspeakable Atrocities to its own population which practically forces you to invade the country purely out of empathy and the goodness of your heart. Nevermind that the population has never asked for the invasion and will in fact be worse off through the war than before - and that this other state who is your ally is doing the exact same things, but then it's suddenly "realpolitik" and just the way the world works. Someone has broken the law of his own country. "Internal affairs" or grounds for invasion? Depends if he is your ally or enemy. Pardon the cynicism, but my growing impression is that war justifications only serve as discussion fodder for domestic audiences and have very little to do with the actual war.
  - mullingitover 9mo ago
    > war justifications only serve as discussion fodder for domestic audiences and have very little to do with the actual war. Two things intersect here: "War is the continuation of politics by other means" - Carl von Clausewitz "Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex" - Frank Zappa There's a third quote that kinda sums it all up neatly: "War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it." — George Orwell The media in the US, being a wholesale production of the oligarchy now, has been brazenly honest about the fact that this is purely a large-scale looting of Venezuela.
    - xg15 9mo ago
      Those are some good quotes. Just speculating, but I wonder if there is another purpose as well: To hand the military a story it can tell itself to assure they are still the "good guys" - i.e. ensuring "troop morale". If you have thousands and thousands of servicemembers, not all of them might submit to drill or be motivated by money or career advancements or other personal goals - some people might ask questions about the bigger picture, about why they are doing an operation, etc. I imagine for situations like this, it's useful for an officer to have some ready-made answers available that they can use to counter those questions, even if the answers really don't make a lot of sense. For all the personnel who executed the Maduro operation, the "we're just helping law enforcement to arrest a criminal" story was probably the practical reality for the last months, no matter how ridiculous it is in the larger context.
- throw0101a 9mo ago
  > Note the US administration contends that he wasn't the legitimate head of state. [1] [2] Trump contends that Biden wasn't the legitimate President because the 2020 election was rigged. If Trump ends up contending the 2026 mid-terms are not legitimate is that valid too? Are they able to act on those contentions to… do stuff?
Etheryte 9mo ago
I see the point you're trying to make, but I'm not fully convinced it's as black and white as you make it out to be. I think we can both agree that lawfully and democratically elected leader of country A having a lawfully and democratically elected leader of country B captured is bad, for all the obvious reasons. What about dictators? What about military coups and forcefully reversing them? Election fraud? Etc. Whether any one country should be global police or not is a very difficult question to answer, but at the same time I could easily see situations where some of these could be beneficial for the greater good.
- ruined 9mo ago
  there's a lot of assumptions here, but granting it's a difficult question: this is why the legislature holds the responsibility to decide, not the executive.
- ciconia 9mo ago
  > I could easily see situations where some of these could be beneficial for the greater good. The greater good of whom? Regardless, we have international organizations where action can be taken by a coalition is states, which provides not only legitimacy but also some level of judicial control. This is so obviously an imperialist power play for the world's largest oil reserves. That some would portray this as acting for the greater good is beyond ridiculous.
  - ebr4him 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - plufz 9mo ago
      To be fair we don’t know the atrocities the US would have committed in those regions if the UN didn’t exist. I’m not saying I know either obviously! But it’s not like the world seemed to be a better place before the UN.
  - assimpleaspossi 9mo ago
beloch 9mo ago
A wrong, followed by another wrong, followed by another wrong, followed by another wrong, followed by yet another wrong... ---------- "Flood the zone" is a political strategy in which a political figure aims to gain media attention, disorient opponents and distract the public from undesirable reports by rapidly forwarding large volumes of newsworthy information to the media. The strategy has been attributed to U.S. president Donald Trump's former chief political strategist Steve Bannon." ---------- Pay attention to the context of this moment. The timing of this invasion is no coincidence. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone
lazide 9mo ago
It's just realpolitik laid particularly bare. The major complaint seems to be that the paperwork wasn't done 'right' here, not much else eh? What is the real difference between Iraq and what just happened, except this was arguably done much cleaner, and with less BS (no having to come up with Yellow Cake, or fake WMDs, for example). This does have the effect of hopefully waking up anyone who is still confused, but I doubt it.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago
  I think I agree. For anyone paying attention, the new rules have been officially established and I don't think they bode that well for previous international order. Still, I am only processing the news and I guess I will need to watch the conference now.
  - woeirua 9mo ago
    The international order was dead ten years ago. GWB put it on life support with Iraq 2. Obama pulled the plug when he didn’t respond to Putin in Crimea.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago
      Hmm. You do have a point. Maybe I should have used a different word that is not as laden with previous baggage. New balance of power is likely more apt. It is still not as accurate as I would want, but it conveys similar message.
energy123 9mo ago
Maduro is not the head of a sovereign state. The President of Venezuela is Edmundo González, the winner of their last election[1]. To know if this violates Venezuela's sovereignty, you would have to ask their President. Personally, I fully support this operation, unless their President indicates otherwise. It's a good day for democracy and freedom. [1] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-are-the-odds-ii-the-venezuelan-presidential-election/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-are-the-odds-...
- otherme123 9mo ago
  The world is full of dictators, one of them just a few miles from Florida, yet the USA only seems interested in dictators with plenty of oil. You fool no one.
  - inglor_cz 9mo ago
    I wouldn't be so sure about the longevity of the Cuban regime right now. The US has many voters of Cuban origin, and the vast majority of those would be happy with a regime change in Habana. Rubio is a well-known Cuba hawk and Trump is crazy enough to try.
    - nephihaha 9mo ago
      I'm surprised Castro's Cuba still exists.
    - erxam 9mo ago
      Yeah, we're fucked. As much as I wish I could go and pontificate about how much better and more moral the PCC is than any other government on the face of the earth, they are in the worst possible spot right now. It's less of a 'will they topple the revolutionary government in Cuba?' and more of a 'will they do it before or after they topple the revolutionary government in Nicaragua?'.
  - energy123 9mo ago
    I'm not naive about Trump's motivations, he tried to destroy democracy in the US after all. But it doesn't bear on my interpretation of the outcome of this event, which is what I am happy about. Call it a coincidental alignment of self-interest with what's best for the people inside Venezuela.
chvid 9mo ago
Also the Chavistas have broad support in the population. To point where they won several elections.
- ErneX 9mo ago
  No, they lost the 2024 election by a landslide, it’s one of the reasons of what happened today.
  - chvid 9mo ago
    Maybe. But there is still popular support; and some of the elections Chavez won, he actually did win.
    - ErneX 9mo ago
      True, but that is irrelevant today, they squandered that support and people want a change now.
    - lentil_soup 9mo ago
      Irrelevant, Chavez died 13 years ago, a lot has happened and changed. Maduro lost the last election hard, he wrecked the support he inherited back then
  - WarOnPrivacy 9mo ago
    > No, they lost the 2024 election by a landslide I don't belittle what VE has gone thru and I accept that something awful for you has been removed from the board. > it’s one of the reasons of what happened today. I would clarify that the current US leadership has little/no history of taking actions that are genuinely for others' welfare. The admin continually claims it is doing good. It's a continual stream, one after the other. By the time one is debunked (and they are), ten more are issued. This method is dividing many Americans (by design) between those who believe the stream of claims and those being overwhelmed by the mountain of debunked falsehoods.
- thrownato 9mo ago
  That's empirically wrong. Also nearly every single Venezuelan who's left the country since Chavez is against Maduro
kledru 9mo ago
Not only the region... A worry is the step will encourage other regimes that feel they have might to remove leaders they do not like and replace them with marionette-like figures. Also, here we have another permanent member of UN Security Council making decisions to intervene without consulting the UN or even their own constitutional bodies... (My opinion of Maduro is that he was not a legitimate leader.)
- gorbachev 9mo ago
  Xi Jinping is probably sending thank you cards to Trump right about now.
  - abirch 9mo ago
    Taiwan's President should definitely be worried.
    - lukan 9mo ago
      I guess they are, because china was (or still is) practicing blocking of Taiwan. And Trump made somewhat a commitment to Taiwan, but who knows if there won't be a better deal with china tomorrow?
      - throwaway1389z 9mo ago
        CHIPS and Science Act disagrees with "commitment" to the tune of 280 billion, considering that Chip manufacturing is the life blood of Taiwan.
  - orangeboats 9mo ago
    Very apt username for the occasion.
  - cman1444 9mo ago
    Indeed. If I'm Xi, I'm invading Taiwan tomorrow. Russia invading Ukraine, USA decapitating Venezuela....there's not even a pretense that international law matters any more. It's also clear that Trump only respects power, which China clearly has. He already backed off tariffs with the critical minerals threat. Unlikely he'd come to Taiwan's aid in my opinion. With political polarization in America, you can bet all kinds of fingers would start pointing at Trump in America, saying he enabled it by meddling with Venezuela. Stock market collapse from TSMC blockade would enhance this even moreso. I wouldn't count on much, if any, rallying around the flag effect.
guessbest 9mo ago
I'm guessing willingly Maduro surrendered as he took the cash offer from Dec 1, 2025 while publicly rejecting it. After all, he left with his wife. > “You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now,” Trump reportedly said, offering safe passage for Maduro, his wife and his son “only if he agreed to resign right away”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/01/trump-maduro-ultimatum-relinquish-power-venezuela https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/01/trump-maduro-u...
IG_Semmelweiss 9mo ago
Regardless of your opinion of maduro, you can still acknowledge that if the head of a sovereign state enacts policies that result in the mass emigration of 8M to neighboring countries, destabilizing all of them [1],[2] in the process, exporting criminal enterprises, any affected head of the affected government certainly has casus belli on said head of state. The policy of no aggression applies. If a government, thru its actions (or inactions) causes massive aggression and hurt on your own people, then its your *duty* as elected official, to stop it and protect your citizens Self-defense is literally the most important mandate a government can have. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/crime-migration-specter-tren-de-aragua-steer-chiles-election-2025-11-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/crime-migration-spect... [2] https://www.cgdev.org/publication/data-against-fear-what-numbers-say-about-venezuelan-migrants-and-crime-ecuador https://www.cgdev.org/publication/data-against-fear-what-num...
- amiraliakbari 9mo ago
  Amusingly what you described translates to USA actions if you are from a country in the middle east. For example did you know that there are at least 5M emigrants of Afghanistan in Iran? Not arguing about other nations actions, just a reminder that if you apply many western logic indiscriminately, the resulting bad actors are very different.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 9mo ago
    And you'd be right. 9/11 did not come out of a vaccumm Unfortunately, everyday Americans' security is deeply impacted by the clowns with office desks in DC, since the 1990s. It's not lost on me that I may lose living relatives living in the US because of Kissinger playing RISK for a living, back in the day. Just as the clowns in government made horrible decisions and should potentially be legally in jeopardy for them, I can also say they are getting the venezuela one, right (at least for now).
    - gnull 9mo ago
      The reasons for doing something and public justification, aka casus belli, are different things. Casus belli makes it cheaper to execute, but reasons are what actually drives them. The clowns and the reasons that drive them are the same for Middle East and Venezuela. Does it make it any better that they happened to have a casus belli that you or I may sympathesize with, given that the reasons not in line with our values? Even a broken clock is right once a day.
satisfice 9mo ago
What principles are you citing? Are they principles that someone made up out of nothing and that no one has ever consistently applied? Is Maduro the head of a sovereign state? Says who?
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
wslh 9mo ago
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.
stocksinsmocks 9mo ago
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.
watwut 9mo ago
USA just pardoned leader of drug mafia and for.er president along with stream of major criminals. We all know any attempts to frame USA choices as noble right now is dishonest.
- tdeck 9mo ago
  What's kind of shocking to me is that no matter how obvious they make the motives this time, and how clearly Venezuela doesn't pose a threat, I'm still reading the same Bush-era justifications ironically being offered in the comments.
  - fzeroracer 9mo ago
    I think it's sort of a terminal centrism. They can't accept that they would do such actions for obvious reasons (despite them overtly telling us 'we're going to run the region' and 'it's for oil') so instead they try and downplay it so that they can seem rational which ironically makes them look even more irrational. They're working backwards to try and justify their stance. It's really insane but also not surprising to see considering how many people do truly live in their own fictional world and never bother to reassess it.
  - watwut 9mo ago
    At this point, I don't think it is naivety or lack of insight. It is propaganda at its best. They like what is going on and support it. They cant just say "it makes us feel manly so we should do it and extract some resources", because they are educated and want to be seen as intellectuals. So, they create these BS rationalizations.
whisperingByte 9mo ago
I need you to know that the discussion on this news on Reddit today was the last straw for me, there is no nuance. It’s just simple minded left, and right. I asked ChatGPT to help me find a site that might have more intelligent discussion more nuance, and this was the very first comment I saw after I registered my account and I literally let a sigh of a relief. Thank you.
- Sprotch 9mo ago
  Yep - Reddit is unfortunately now where the simpletons hang out. This is far better, you can have intelligent debates
  - jennyholzer3 9mo ago
    The people and LLMs that use this website are as numb-skulled, illiterate, and misanthropic as the people and LLMs that use reddit; In fact, these are the same people and the same LLMs.
    - llmslave2 9mo ago
      Yep, only real difference is Redditors now know they aren't smart or special, people here haven't figured that out yet.
  - llmslave2 9mo ago
    There isn't really much difference between here and Reddit. Especially on political topics, you get the same tired and defeated arguments and opinions over and over again.
    - komali2 9mo ago
      To an extent yes, but individually I have much more nuanced interactions here with users. Whereas on Reddit I get dog piled by hundreds of black and white thinkers all circle jerking each other, making identical replies to my comments. Here I often will get a deep thread with one user that's quite interesting, even if we disagree in many ways. It's also usually polite for the most part.
Sprotch 9mo ago
Exactly. And worse, it’s violating international law just because you can. This will be used by Putin and China etc to justify ever worse actions
- mupuff1234 9mo ago
  Russia is already doing horrible things without this pretext, so I dont think this argument holds.
JonoBB 9mo ago
Putin and Xi must be ecstatic at the leverage this gives them.
kwanbix 9mo ago
Maduro is a dictator and a criminal - there is no doubt about it. He is an illegitimate president who has systematically violated the rights of the Venezuelan people. He has bought off the military, the judiciary, and other key institutions, hollowing out the state to ensure his grip on power. His regime has also supported and benefited from the existence of drug cartels in Venezuela as another mechanism to maintain control and stay in power. Together with Chávez, Maduro has ruled the country for more than 27 years, a period marked by countless atrocities against the population, from forced disappearances to torture and rape. The result is one of the largest humanitarian and migration crises in modern history: more than 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country to escape the regime. The international community has proven itself unwilling to act. The UN will do nothing. NATO will do nothing. No one will. We were, and perhaps still are, watching Venezuela turn into another Cuba, with one crucial difference: Venezuela sits on vast oil reserves. The "Crazy Red" is a pig, but at least he is the only one willing to confront Maduro. This may end up being the only genuinely positive thing he does during his presidency. Yes, the attack is not "ideal". But in an ideal world, there would be no dictatorships, there would be no Maduro. And I say all this as a South American with family in both Colombia and Venezuela. EDIT: this is written by the Vzla admins in Reddit: Foreigners, if your opinion comes without ever meeting a Venezuelan part of the biggest diaspora of the 21st century, I would advise against commenting. You might deserve a ban from this subreddit, thank you for your attention to this matter.
Art9681 9mo ago
We have different definitions of sovereign state apparently. "In his time in office, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has stolen two presidential elections, electoral monitors and human rights groups contend, while jailing critics and overseeing an economic collapse that caused eight million Venezuelans to emigrate, including to the U.S. But in some ways, Maduro is more safely ensconced than ever, with most opposition leaders in exile and Venezuelans too fearful to protest as they once did. The problem for those who see hope in the military rising up is that Maduro has surrounded himself with a fortress of lieutenants whose fortunes and future are tied to his, from Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López to generals, admirals, colonels and captains throughout the armed forces." https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-coup-trump-battle-96da0d5d https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-coup-tru...
- Noaidi 9mo ago
  I am going to assume that if you were old enough at the time that you thought Iraq had WMD's? How people can just read one article and think they know the world is fascinating to me.
  - buzzerbetrayed 9mo ago
    Hilarious how this is coming from someone that just assumed a 20 year old belief of a person they don’t know
- cataphract 9mo ago
  What's that have to do with it being a sovereign state? By that standard, neither Russia nor China are sovereign states. And it's not like the US gives a shit about democracy outside its borders. The CIA overthrew Jacobo Árbenz in the 50s, supported the military coup in Brazil in 1964, pinochet and Hugo Banzer in the 70s. This is normal behavior for the US in Latin America. It's nothing to do with concern for Venezuela's citizens.
- ibejoeb 9mo ago
  There's really no benefit in arguing on the basis of the definition of sovereignty. There is no definition. It's a self-evident state: if you assert that you are sovereign, and you can back it up, then you're sovereign. That's it.
mihaaly 9mo ago
This is agression in its purest form. They want something, they have the means to take it, and so they take it. With no regards to others, others can fck themselves in fact. They proclaimed in loud enough and often enough in the past months. As every agressors they can hammer together some form of excuse for doing so. Just like anyone else in similar situation did throughout the history. One of them was the leader of Germany once and was called Hitler. But we can name lots of other enemy-of-the-humanity viles from Japan, Russia, Mongolia, etc, etc. the line is long for the despicable beings.
Noaidi 9mo ago
No no no no. We get to have an opinion of Maduro and we should because you have an opinion by saying it is a wrong. This is not a "regardless" situation. Bookmark this because the support for Maduro AND socialism in Venezuela is strong. They will never let you see socialism succeed because then all our own oligarchs would be out on their a$$e$. This is nothing but some trumped up capitalist Monroe Doctrine BS. Watching all the Venezuelan CIA toadies on the news this morning was so infuriating. Both Edmundo González and María Corina Machado are fascists right wing creeps that were working with the US for this to happen.
grumple 9mo ago
This is a core problem of international politics. We allow brutal dictatorships to continue subjugating tens of millions of people and killing millions in the name of convention. Our international organizations (the UN in particular) are basically ruled by authoritarian regimes. Is there no justification for external powers to effect regime change? We just have to wait and watch as the dictator kills a ton of people? Oh, and of course there is Maduro's support for Putin via sanctions evasion. Even now, Venezuelans face a brutal security force that is likely to retain power, but hopefully that power fragments. Imo we should have done this right after the last election which Maduro stole.
- amanaplanacanal 9mo ago
  Something like 50% of the population of the world live under rulers who were not democratically elected. Should the US taxpayers fund all of their removals? On top of that, removing a ruler without any plan for follow-up frequently makes things worse, not better. We seem to have already forgotten that removing the leadership of Iraq led to the rise of ISIS and its horrifying consequences.
  - grumple 9mo ago
    > Something like 50% of the population of the world live under rulers who were not democratically elected. Should the US taxpayers fund all of their removals? If it's in our interest, absolutely. Venezuela nationalized (which is a nice way to say they stole) American oil interests and companies decades ago, has assisted Russia in flouting US sanctions, and has in part enabled the drug cartels. Each of those things cost us money. We're also getting a ton of immigrants from Venezuela that we have to spend money dealing with. Venezuela could also be a much better trading partner for us in the future with a liberal democratic society. All of that is directly in the best interest for the US. Believe it or not, sometimes our interests lie outside our borders. Isolationism is a failed policy by every nation that tries it, and this is something that used to be taught to every school child in America about our past policies. It's a shame those lessons seem to have been forgotten by our people. > On top of that, removing a ruler without any plan for follow-up frequently makes things worse, not better. We seem to have already forgotten that removing the leadership of Iraq led to the rise of ISIS and its horrifying consequences. This is absolutely true. You have to destroy the security forces as well, and support the elected democratic leadership. We may fail to do so in this case.
rambojohnson 9mo ago
Whether Maduro is corrupt, authoritarian, or illegitimate by your definition doesn’t suddenly make an undeclared foreign military strike to seize a sitting head of state acceptable. Sovereignty isn’t a reward for good behavior. It’s a constraint meant precisely to prevent powerful states from unilaterally deciding which governments get removed by force. If the standard is “we can capture leaders we deem illegitimate,” then you’ve effectively endorsed a world where power, not law, decides regime change. You can oppose Maduro and still acknowledge that abducting a head of state via air strikes destabilizes a country of 30+ million people and sets a precedent that will be used by actors far less selective than the U.S. Two wrongs don’t cancel out just because one feels morally satisfying. of course, we all drink the American imperialism koolaid here.
- xvector 9mo ago
  > then you’ve effectively endorsed a world where power, not law, decides regime change. This has always been the case throughout the vast majority of human history including current day. You are sovereign if you can prove it, and you aren't sovereign if you can't. "International law" is something superpowers ignore at will. It is not "wrong" or "right", it simply is.
dismalaf 9mo ago
Russia already attempted it, failed, and now are into the 4th year of their debacle. The US pulled it off in one night. The only thing it reinforces is the US' military superiority.
- evan_ 9mo ago
  Pulled what off? Russia was trying to occupy Ukraine, not just kill Zelensky (though they’d obviously like to do that). Trump announced that the plan is to “run Venezuela” but there are no troops on the ground, the US controls no territory. This isn’t The Wizard of Oz where you kill the wicked witch and the flying monkeys leave. This is only just starting. High probability that trump gets distracted by something else and forgets, but if not welcome to the next three years of your life.
  - dismalaf 9mo ago
    You don't remember the initial hours of the war where Russia attempted to take over Hostomel airport and land commandos there? And Ukrainian intelligence stating that Zelenskyy was the target? No, Russia attempted it, failed, moved goalposts, failed again, and keeps moving goalposts to save face.
throw0101a 9mo ago
An observation: > This argument means that any time a president wants to invade a country "legally," he just has to get his DOJ to indict the country's leader. It makes Congress' power to declare war totally meaningless. * https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/2007450814097305734#m https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/2007450814097305734#m Also, the irony: > the administration's position is that American courts can hold any president accountable for crimes, except the American president * https://x.com/SevaUT/status/2007433614657552640#m https://x.com/SevaUT/status/2007433614657552640#m
- erkt 9mo ago
  Might makes right.
  - toomanyrichies 9mo ago
    Remember this energy when someone stronger than you decides they want your wallet.
    - tekknik 9mo ago
      this is why people carry guns in america
      - baby 9mo ago
        I thought these were for mass shootings
        casey2 9mo ago
        Maybe we should let people learn that actions have consequences. The kind and uplifting are seldom shot. Take Isabelle Robinson from parkland. Paraphrasing: "It's not my responsibility to "befriend" a person who is showing violent red flags; it’s the school’s job to intervene and provide professional help or remove the threat." So she did notice the red flags, but didn't do anything, she believe the school should do something not her. The failure in this line of reasoning is that every institution is made up of individuals, if they all think the same way nothing will change. This is literally a school shooting victim saying she doesn't believe that she should personally have to pay... well she didn't have to pay as much as some of her classmates. The school of will find their own people to blame. Pretty much every major religion teaches something like: If they slap one cheek show them the other, and that we are all one. Nevertheless, very few people will take any amount of responsibility for another "individuals" actions. The logical conclusion is that we sit in silod VR pods until the life support systems fail
stickfigure 9mo ago
If two wrongs didn't make a right, we wouldn't punish people who commit crimes. It should be up to the Venezuelans to decide who leads them. Maduro decided to ignore the will of the people when he held power through clear and blatant election fraud. If some sort of global public service could reach out and punish all politicians who do this, the world would be a better place. If you are unfamiliar with Venezuela, this is a good primer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZHXW1vOBI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZHXW1vOBI4 From a few days ago, "The Crisis in Venezuela. Explained." It's from Warfronts, one of Simon Whistler's projects. He is neither American nor lives in the US.
- tdeck 9mo ago
  So if China came in and "helped" the Venezuelan people to get rid of Maduro, you'd feel the same way? Of course not.
  - stickfigure 9mo ago
    What on earth? Of course I would feel the same way.
linhns 9mo ago
Agreed. Watching the worldwide reactions so far, it’s surprising to see the RN (hard-right) in France most vocal in condemning.
qaq 9mo ago
For starters even EU does not recognize Maduro as legit head of state
martin-t 9mo ago
> Two wrongs don’t make a right. I hate this statement with a passion. Let's ignore the politics of the current situation for a while and look at the first principles of right and wrong. 1) When somebody knowingly and intentionally hurts another person without a valid reason, that's wrong. 2) Now the aggressor is in the wrong and requires punishment (there are multiple purposes to punishment: taking away any advantage gained by the offense, further disadvantaging aggressors, compensation for the victim, retribution, deterrence, etc.). 3) A punishment is just if it's proportional to the offense but only those with sufficient certainty about the extent of the offense, about the offender's identify and his guilt can carry it out. Usually, in western style societies, courts serve this purpose but courts are a legal concept, justice is a moral concept. Morally, the punishment can be carried out by anyone who satisfies the criteria, there's nothing to put one person above another morally. Legality has multiple tiers: tier 1 is individuals, tier 2 is states. States are a tier 2 institution imposed on tier 1. There is no tier 3 court-like institution which can be imposed on tier 2 entities.[0] Does that mean wrongs by tier 2 entities should go unpunished? No. They often do but there's no moral principles saying that it has to be that way, let along that it should be. 4) Punishment by its nature is the act of intentionally and knowingly hurting another person. But it's not wrong because unlike in point 1), it has a valid reason. *What some people consider the second wrong is not actually a wrong.* [0]: You could think of international organizations but they don't have a monopoly on violence above state level and therefore no actual mechanism for enforcement.
annexrichmond 9mo ago
Would you have said the same thing in the 40s if the US were able to capture Hitler?
nag34 9mo ago
[dead]
MisterMower 9mo ago
You’ll hear a lot of the same people decrying this action simultaneously calling for the assassination of Putin. The cognitive dissonance is something to behold.
OCASMv2 9mo ago
Arresting the leader of a narco terrorist tyranny allied with even worse powers like Iran, China and Russia is in fact a good thing.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
yibg 9mo ago
There are also reports of 40 something people killed. Doesn't that amount to basically (mass) murder? There is no declaration of war, so you can't really call them civilian casualties.
woodpanel 9mo ago
> head of a sovereign state Err > Since 2019, more than 50 countries, including the United States, have refused to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s head of state. Including the EU and its member states > a country of 30+ million people If those 30 M being the remainder after ~8 M fled the country (20% of the population) within the last 10 years, the „destabilization“ was already there.
randyrand 9mo ago
If he committed crimes against the USA, it shouldn’t really matter what his title is. The USA has a duty to uphold its laws. The EU does the same. Putin has a warrant for his arrest in every EU country, and they are legally allowed to extract him from russia AFAIK.
PlanksVariable 9mo ago
I do not acknowledge that. If you want to make an argument that overthrowing a dictator is always wrong on principle, go ahead. But I will not accept this as axiomatic. Claiming this could “destabilize” the country suggests that the country is stable. It’s not. You mention the 30+ million people who live there, under the dictatorship, but ignore the 8+ million who have fled the country in recent years and the instability that has unleashed on country and the entire region.
tekknik 9mo ago
should this same logic apply to someone like say, Hitler? if you hide behind the “sovereign nation” (while denying the US the same) then you can justify all sorts of atrocities.

casey2 9mo ago

[flagged]

dataflow 9mo ago

> Regardless of your opinion on Maduro, you can still acknowledge that the head of a sovereign state being captured (...) Note the US administration contends that he wasn't the legitimate head of state. [1] [2] [1] https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/marco-rubio-nicolas-maduro-not-president-venezuela/ https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/marco-rubio-nicolas-m... [2] I'm (obviously) being sloppy regarding head of state vs. head of government.

delfinom 9mo ago
Well Russia contends Zelensky isn't the legitimate head of state of Ukraine.
- incrudible 9mo ago
  You have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to contend that Zelensky is not the democratically legitimated head of state of Ukraine. For Maduro, it's much simpler: He lost the election, yet he remained in power.
  - blell 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - incrudible 9mo ago
      > Then, he suspended the next election and no more elections have been celebrated ever since. Yes, but that may have something to do with the fact that his country was invaded and he has been at war ever since. Suspending elections for that reason is legitimate by "our" standards.
      - AnimalMuppet 9mo ago
        We didn't suspend elections during World War II. We had been attacked (and overseas parts had been invaded and conquered), and we were at war. Elections still went on as normal. Even during the Civil War there were elections, even though there was fighting in some of the states that were voting.
        wiseowise 9mo ago
        > We [industrial superpower dwarfing whole axis combined, surrounded by ocean with no neighbors who can challenge us and unique geography that makes it literally impossible to invade at the time] didn't suspend election during World War II. We had been attacked [parts so insignificant compared to the whole that there was no reason to even consider delaying elections]... This is the most `ShitAmericansSay` argument ever. What's next? Poland should've held elections while being pounded from both sides? Russia had "elections" during WWI and look where it ended up.
        Hikikomori 9mo ago
        [flagged]
    - dzikimarian 9mo ago
      You forgot to add that Ukrainian opposition leader supported suspension.
    - andyjohnson0 9mo ago
      > Then, he suspended the next election Zelensky did not suspend elections. Ukraine's constitution prohibits the holding of elections under conditions of martial law. "However, martial law—imposed after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 and still in place as the war continues—has prevented elections from taking place. Under Ukrainian law, elections cannot be held while martial law is in effect to ensure continuity of governance and support the nation’s defense." [1] [1] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraines-presidential-elections-amid-war-political-legal-and-security-challenges https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraines-presidential...
  - iknowSFR 9mo ago
    Bookmark this comment because it’s going to be very relevant in a few years.
    - kcplate 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - sigmarule 9mo ago
        Seems silly to ignore that the last date in your list had an event closer to what OP is referring to than any other year, no? Considering he was already crying election fraud in 2016 you could certainly view this as a line with upwards slope…
        kcplate 9mo ago
        I’m sorry…did I miss martial law being declared in 2021? Did I miss Trump being president from 2021 through 2024?
        sigmarule 9mo ago
        You are considering them binary states while I’m considering it a continuous scale. I prefer my way.
        kcplate 9mo ago
        My preference is reality.
        sigmarule 9mo ago
        Perhaps learn how to model it, then.
        kcplate 9mo ago
  - AlecSchueler 9mo ago
    Ok, now who can do the toppling? What if China had done this?
    - incrudible 9mo ago
      Done what, exactly? Abduct Maduro?
      - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago
        Hmm, you don't see a simple connection, where China is the counterparty in this power struggle?
      - AlecSchueler 9mo ago
        Yes, for example, or forcefully remove the leader of the country of your choice.
        incrudible 9mo ago
        If they had removed Maduro because he's an illegitmate autocrat funneling drugs into the US, I'd be deeply confused, considering he's on their side.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
        erkt 9mo ago
        [flagged]
    - balakk 9mo ago
      I wonder if this emboldens china to do the same to Taiwan..
      - erkt 9mo ago
        China gets Taiwan without any US intervention as soon as our chip foundries have been built state side. Xi is patient.
  - elektronika 9mo ago
    Zelensky has suspended elections since Russia invaded. He hasn't had a chance to be voted out, and probably will never get one.
    - Sabinus 9mo ago
      The Ukrainian Constitution suspends elections in a State of Emergency. The State of Emergency is renewed regularly by the Ukrainian Parliament. The Ukrainian people are broadly supportive of Zelensky, who is publically open to holding elections if given the space and resources to do so. Which is a ceasefire, and some time and money.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago
  You think you are making a counter argument, but you just managed to be welcomed to the end of the thought process of this exercise as contending can be done by just about anyone. It reinforces a bad precedent.
only-one1701 9mo ago
I contend my net worth is actually 9 figures
- phtrivier 9mo ago
  Case in point : if you had the biggest military in the world, and no one to credibly oppose you, you'd have a lot of arguments to convince everyone that your bank account is actually full. Lesson 1 of W.Spaniel course on international relationship is that "international order" is the longest running form of anarchy. Pray you stay on the good side of the Emperor closest to your home. It's a good thing the current emperor is old - at least we have patience and trusting biology as an option. Successions are often messy, and I don't see Emperor Trump as the kind to cautiously pick his heir.
  - xg15 9mo ago
    That's easily written if you're in the country that benefits most from that situation, not so easily in other countries. The entire post-WWII system with the UN and international law was an attempt to change this.
    - btilly 9mo ago
      That is a misunderstanding. The stated and actual purposes of the UN are different. The actual purpose was to give great powers a place to negotiate with each other, so that we wouldn't get a third world war. That is why the 5 most powerful countries were permanently put on the security council with complete veto powers.
      - xg15 9mo ago
        I imagine this is the difference between how it's taught in Europe and in the US.
        btilly 9mo ago
        You imagine wrong. It was a point that I first remember seeing from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Dyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Dyer. Who is not from the US, but is an expert on the subject. It was in his documentary series War, but I don't remember which episode.
christkv 9mo ago
So did the EU parliament and a whole range of European countries
jessriedel 9mo ago
I think the (disputable) argument is that, for global stability and equilibrium reasons, there should be a general prohibition against kidnapping/assassination of de facto heads of state, regardless of whether they were legitimately elected or are dictators.
- Muromec 9mo ago
  We are not hovever optimizing for stabilitybanymore in Kali Yuga that we are living through
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- IMTDb 9mo ago
  Companies can become « too big to fail » and dictatord can become « too powerful to fall » ?
- close04 9mo ago
  General rules don’t apply to superpowers or the countries they protect. China, US, Russia get to do whatever their military or economic power affords them, unprovoked aggression, war crimes, terror acts. There are general rules against war crimes and they still happen day after day, under flimsy excuses. Bombed a hospital or a wedding party? There was a suspected terrorist there. White phosphorus over civilians? It was just for the smoke screen. Overthrew a government overseas? Freedom for those poor people.
  - wiseowise 9mo ago
    Russia is a regional power, though.
    - close04 9mo ago
      The definition is probably not very precise. They started a war of aggression and every other country is tiptoeing around them. Iraq was also a regional power and got a very different treatment. So the “power” line isn’t so clear. China on the other hand doesn’t get visibly involved in almost any remote conflict and they’re obviously a (if not the) superpower.
ycombinary 9mo ago
You know the president said that the Epstein files were a democrat hoax, right? I feel like at this stage the US administration could contend that the moon is in fact made of cheese and news agencies would respond by running news stories about the implications of this on future possible lunar missions.
- ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
  Interesting that they felt the need to redact a hoax and even include an innocent photo of Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson that was redacted to make it look suspect.
  - ycombinary 9mo ago
    I'm so bored. Trump is a sex offender. He's also a convicted criminal. He is also completely devoid of ethics or morality. But because of the car crash that is American politics, you have to address all of this through the theatre of the set of documents associated with the world's most infamous paedophile (who also appears to be his best mate). It's exhausting.
    - ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
      Well, I'm just an onlooker, so I don't have any influence on U.S. politics. I'm just constantly astonished that the U.S. people would vote for such a charlatan. Twice.
      - ycombinary 9mo ago
        Social media and tech companies are effectively helping external actors (and malicious internal actors) to break western democracy.
        ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
        Quite - that's been patently obvious since the Cambridge Analytica scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana... Ultimately, there's a war between the haves and the have-nots and one side clearly has more resources.
gpm 9mo ago
It's also widely acknowledged that elections in Russia are rigged, and yet the US was quite angry at Ukraine over Russia's (false, as it turned out) claim that Ukraine attacked Putin...
kdavis 9mo ago
The 3rd section of the 14th amendment[1] states that no person having engaged in insurrection[2] shall hold any office, civil or military, in the United States. So technically Trump isn’t a legitimate head of state either. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Section_3:_Disqualification_from_office_for_insurrection_or_rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un... [2]https://www.npr.org/2025/12/31/g-s1-104190/capitol-riot-trump-jack-smith-transcript https://www.npr.org/2025/12/31/g-s1-104190/capitol-riot-trum...
- RemainsOfTheDay 9mo ago
  [dead]
- andsoitis 9mo ago
  > The 3rd section of the 14th amendment[1] states that no person having engaged in insurrection[2] shall hold any office, civil or military, in the United States. So technically Trump isn’t a legitimate head of state either. Was he tried and convicted? As far as I know the powers that be instead decided for some reason to attack him on other charges (sexual misconduct, corruption, etc.)
  - derbOac 9mo ago
    The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump engaged in insurrection as a matter of fact. That is, they deemed it so obvious from the evidence presented (much of which was publicly available) that it didn't require a trial for determination. This was appealed to the US Supreme Court, who didn't rule that this wasn't true, they ruled that the 14th amendment needs to be applied by Congress for reasons of consistency across states... which sidestepped the entire issue and was a dereliction of duty in my opinion, in the sense that they are the highest court and could have ruled on the issue of insurrection, or at least required some kind of jury proceeding at that time. They basically didn't do their one job. Then Jack Smith later amassed a case about it, with grand jury approval. He ran out of time to try and convict Trump before he was elected, basically published a summary report of his case. Recently he testified before a congressional committee about it and asserted he was extremely confident Trump would have been convicted. He testified that he never consulted with Biden about the case, and asked that the rest of his materials from his investigation be publicly released. Legally speaking there is a strong argument that Trump engaged in insurrection; he's just been shielded from the consequences by political maneuvers and poor timing. Put differently, one state supreme court decided he so obviously engaged in it that it didn't require a trial. Another federal attorney presented his evidence to a grand jury and they decided he was likely to succeed if it went to trial. My personal belief is historians will look at the evidence presented and conclude that US Congress made catastrophic mistakes by not impeaching Trump the first time (for obstruction of justice first, and insurrection second), and that SCOTUS made an equally catastrophic mistake (or corrupt decision) by not ruling on insurrection as the highest federal court, either on its own or with a grand jury trial.
xg15 9mo ago
Honestly, I'm getting increasingly fascinated with the utterly absurd logic that states are putting into their justifications for war. You get "preemptive self defense" that urgently requires "buffer zones" on foreign territory, which then mysteriously become your own territory and have to be defended with even more buffer zones. Some Terror Regime of Literal Nazis is doing Unspeakable Atrocities to its own population which practically forces you to invade the country purely out of empathy and the goodness of your heart. Nevermind that the population has never asked for the invasion and will in fact be worse off through the war than before - and that this other state who is your ally is doing the exact same things, but then it's suddenly "realpolitik" and just the way the world works. Someone has broken the law of his own country. "Internal affairs" or grounds for invasion? Depends if he is your ally or enemy. Pardon the cynicism, but my growing impression is that war justifications only serve as discussion fodder for domestic audiences and have very little to do with the actual war.
- mullingitover 9mo ago
  > war justifications only serve as discussion fodder for domestic audiences and have very little to do with the actual war. Two things intersect here: "War is the continuation of politics by other means" - Carl von Clausewitz "Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex" - Frank Zappa There's a third quote that kinda sums it all up neatly: "War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it." — George Orwell The media in the US, being a wholesale production of the oligarchy now, has been brazenly honest about the fact that this is purely a large-scale looting of Venezuela.
  - xg15 9mo ago
    Those are some good quotes. Just speculating, but I wonder if there is another purpose as well: To hand the military a story it can tell itself to assure they are still the "good guys" - i.e. ensuring "troop morale". If you have thousands and thousands of servicemembers, not all of them might submit to drill or be motivated by money or career advancements or other personal goals - some people might ask questions about the bigger picture, about why they are doing an operation, etc. I imagine for situations like this, it's useful for an officer to have some ready-made answers available that they can use to counter those questions, even if the answers really don't make a lot of sense. For all the personnel who executed the Maduro operation, the "we're just helping law enforcement to arrest a criminal" story was probably the practical reality for the last months, no matter how ridiculous it is in the larger context.
throw0101a 9mo ago
> Note the US administration contends that he wasn't the legitimate head of state. [1] [2] Trump contends that Biden wasn't the legitimate President because the 2020 election was rigged. If Trump ends up contending the 2026 mid-terms are not legitimate is that valid too? Are they able to act on those contentions to… do stuff?

Etheryte 9mo ago

I see the point you're trying to make, but I'm not fully convinced it's as black and white as you make it out to be. I think we can both agree that lawfully and democratically elected leader of country A having a lawfully and democratically elected leader of country B captured is bad, for all the obvious reasons. What about dictators? What about military coups and forcefully reversing them? Election fraud? Etc. Whether any one country should be global police or not is a very difficult question to answer, but at the same time I could easily see situations where some of these could be beneficial for the greater good.

ruined 9mo ago
there's a lot of assumptions here, but granting it's a difficult question: this is why the legislature holds the responsibility to decide, not the executive.
ciconia 9mo ago
> I could easily see situations where some of these could be beneficial for the greater good. The greater good of whom? Regardless, we have international organizations where action can be taken by a coalition is states, which provides not only legitimacy but also some level of judicial control. This is so obviously an imperialist power play for the world's largest oil reserves. That some would portray this as acting for the greater good is beyond ridiculous.
- ebr4him 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - plufz 9mo ago
    To be fair we don’t know the atrocities the US would have committed in those regions if the UN didn’t exist. I’m not saying I know either obviously! But it’s not like the world seemed to be a better place before the UN.
- assimpleaspossi 9mo ago

beloch 9mo ago

A wrong, followed by another wrong, followed by another wrong, followed by another wrong, followed by yet another wrong... ---------- "Flood the zone" is a political strategy in which a political figure aims to gain media attention, disorient opponents and distract the public from undesirable reports by rapidly forwarding large volumes of newsworthy information to the media. The strategy has been attributed to U.S. president Donald Trump's former chief political strategist Steve Bannon." ---------- Pay attention to the context of this moment. The timing of this invasion is no coincidence. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone

lazide 9mo ago

It's just realpolitik laid particularly bare. The major complaint seems to be that the paperwork wasn't done 'right' here, not much else eh? What is the real difference between Iraq and what just happened, except this was arguably done much cleaner, and with less BS (no having to come up with Yellow Cake, or fake WMDs, for example). This does have the effect of hopefully waking up anyone who is still confused, but I doubt it.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago
I think I agree. For anyone paying attention, the new rules have been officially established and I don't think they bode that well for previous international order. Still, I am only processing the news and I guess I will need to watch the conference now.
- woeirua 9mo ago
  The international order was dead ten years ago. GWB put it on life support with Iraq 2. Obama pulled the plug when he didn’t respond to Putin in Crimea.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo ago
    Hmm. You do have a point. Maybe I should have used a different word that is not as laden with previous baggage. New balance of power is likely more apt. It is still not as accurate as I would want, but it conveys similar message.

energy123 9mo ago

Maduro is not the head of a sovereign state. The President of Venezuela is Edmundo González, the winner of their last election[1]. To know if this violates Venezuela's sovereignty, you would have to ask their President. Personally, I fully support this operation, unless their President indicates otherwise. It's a good day for democracy and freedom. [1] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-are-the-odds-ii-the-venezuelan-presidential-election/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-are-the-odds-...

otherme123 9mo ago
The world is full of dictators, one of them just a few miles from Florida, yet the USA only seems interested in dictators with plenty of oil. You fool no one.
- inglor_cz 9mo ago
  I wouldn't be so sure about the longevity of the Cuban regime right now. The US has many voters of Cuban origin, and the vast majority of those would be happy with a regime change in Habana. Rubio is a well-known Cuba hawk and Trump is crazy enough to try.
  - nephihaha 9mo ago
    I'm surprised Castro's Cuba still exists.
  - erxam 9mo ago
    Yeah, we're fucked. As much as I wish I could go and pontificate about how much better and more moral the PCC is than any other government on the face of the earth, they are in the worst possible spot right now. It's less of a 'will they topple the revolutionary government in Cuba?' and more of a 'will they do it before or after they topple the revolutionary government in Nicaragua?'.
- energy123 9mo ago
  I'm not naive about Trump's motivations, he tried to destroy democracy in the US after all. But it doesn't bear on my interpretation of the outcome of this event, which is what I am happy about. Call it a coincidental alignment of self-interest with what's best for the people inside Venezuela.

chvid 9mo ago

Also the Chavistas have broad support in the population. To point where they won several elections.

ErneX 9mo ago
No, they lost the 2024 election by a landslide, it’s one of the reasons of what happened today.
- chvid 9mo ago
  Maybe. But there is still popular support; and some of the elections Chavez won, he actually did win.
  - ErneX 9mo ago
    True, but that is irrelevant today, they squandered that support and people want a change now.
  - lentil_soup 9mo ago
    Irrelevant, Chavez died 13 years ago, a lot has happened and changed. Maduro lost the last election hard, he wrecked the support he inherited back then
- WarOnPrivacy 9mo ago
  > No, they lost the 2024 election by a landslide I don't belittle what VE has gone thru and I accept that something awful for you has been removed from the board. > it’s one of the reasons of what happened today. I would clarify that the current US leadership has little/no history of taking actions that are genuinely for others' welfare. The admin continually claims it is doing good. It's a continual stream, one after the other. By the time one is debunked (and they are), ten more are issued. This method is dividing many Americans (by design) between those who believe the stream of claims and those being overwhelmed by the mountain of debunked falsehoods.
thrownato 9mo ago
That's empirically wrong. Also nearly every single Venezuelan who's left the country since Chavez is against Maduro

kledru 9mo ago

Not only the region... A worry is the step will encourage other regimes that feel they have might to remove leaders they do not like and replace them with marionette-like figures. Also, here we have another permanent member of UN Security Council making decisions to intervene without consulting the UN or even their own constitutional bodies... (My opinion of Maduro is that he was not a legitimate leader.)

gorbachev 9mo ago
Xi Jinping is probably sending thank you cards to Trump right about now.
- abirch 9mo ago
  Taiwan's President should definitely be worried.
  - lukan 9mo ago
    I guess they are, because china was (or still is) practicing blocking of Taiwan. And Trump made somewhat a commitment to Taiwan, but who knows if there won't be a better deal with china tomorrow?
    - throwaway1389z 9mo ago
      CHIPS and Science Act disagrees with "commitment" to the tune of 280 billion, considering that Chip manufacturing is the life blood of Taiwan.
- orangeboats 9mo ago
  Very apt username for the occasion.
- cman1444 9mo ago
  Indeed. If I'm Xi, I'm invading Taiwan tomorrow. Russia invading Ukraine, USA decapitating Venezuela....there's not even a pretense that international law matters any more. It's also clear that Trump only respects power, which China clearly has. He already backed off tariffs with the critical minerals threat. Unlikely he'd come to Taiwan's aid in my opinion. With political polarization in America, you can bet all kinds of fingers would start pointing at Trump in America, saying he enabled it by meddling with Venezuela. Stock market collapse from TSMC blockade would enhance this even moreso. I wouldn't count on much, if any, rallying around the flag effect.

guessbest 9mo ago

I'm guessing willingly Maduro surrendered as he took the cash offer from Dec 1, 2025 while publicly rejecting it. After all, he left with his wife. > “You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now,” Trump reportedly said, offering safe passage for Maduro, his wife and his son “only if he agreed to resign right away”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/01/trump-maduro-ultimatum-relinquish-power-venezuela https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/01/trump-maduro-u...

IG_Semmelweiss 9mo ago

Regardless of your opinion of maduro, you can still acknowledge that if the head of a sovereign state enacts policies that result in the mass emigration of 8M to neighboring countries, destabilizing all of them [1],[2] in the process, exporting criminal enterprises, any affected head of the affected government certainly has casus belli on said head of state. The policy of no aggression applies. If a government, thru its actions (or inactions) causes massive aggression and hurt on your own people, then its your *duty* as elected official, to stop it and protect your citizens Self-defense is literally the most important mandate a government can have. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/crime-migration-specter-tren-de-aragua-steer-chiles-election-2025-11-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/crime-migration-spect... [2] https://www.cgdev.org/publication/data-against-fear-what-numbers-say-about-venezuelan-migrants-and-crime-ecuador https://www.cgdev.org/publication/data-against-fear-what-num...

amiraliakbari 9mo ago
Amusingly what you described translates to USA actions if you are from a country in the middle east. For example did you know that there are at least 5M emigrants of Afghanistan in Iran? Not arguing about other nations actions, just a reminder that if you apply many western logic indiscriminately, the resulting bad actors are very different.
- IG_Semmelweiss 9mo ago
  And you'd be right. 9/11 did not come out of a vaccumm Unfortunately, everyday Americans' security is deeply impacted by the clowns with office desks in DC, since the 1990s. It's not lost on me that I may lose living relatives living in the US because of Kissinger playing RISK for a living, back in the day. Just as the clowns in government made horrible decisions and should potentially be legally in jeopardy for them, I can also say they are getting the venezuela one, right (at least for now).
  - gnull 9mo ago
    The reasons for doing something and public justification, aka casus belli, are different things. Casus belli makes it cheaper to execute, but reasons are what actually drives them. The clowns and the reasons that drive them are the same for Middle East and Venezuela. Does it make it any better that they happened to have a casus belli that you or I may sympathesize with, given that the reasons not in line with our values? Even a broken clock is right once a day.

satisfice 9mo ago

What principles are you citing? Are they principles that someone made up out of nothing and that no one has ever consistently applied? Is Maduro the head of a sovereign state? Says who?

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

wslh 9mo ago

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.

stocksinsmocks 9mo ago

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.

watwut 9mo ago

USA just pardoned leader of drug mafia and for.er president along with stream of major criminals. We all know any attempts to frame USA choices as noble right now is dishonest.

tdeck 9mo ago
What's kind of shocking to me is that no matter how obvious they make the motives this time, and how clearly Venezuela doesn't pose a threat, I'm still reading the same Bush-era justifications ironically being offered in the comments.
- fzeroracer 9mo ago
  I think it's sort of a terminal centrism. They can't accept that they would do such actions for obvious reasons (despite them overtly telling us 'we're going to run the region' and 'it's for oil') so instead they try and downplay it so that they can seem rational which ironically makes them look even more irrational. They're working backwards to try and justify their stance. It's really insane but also not surprising to see considering how many people do truly live in their own fictional world and never bother to reassess it.
- watwut 9mo ago
  At this point, I don't think it is naivety or lack of insight. It is propaganda at its best. They like what is going on and support it. They cant just say "it makes us feel manly so we should do it and extract some resources", because they are educated and want to be seen as intellectuals. So, they create these BS rationalizations.

whisperingByte 9mo ago

I need you to know that the discussion on this news on Reddit today was the last straw for me, there is no nuance. It’s just simple minded left, and right. I asked ChatGPT to help me find a site that might have more intelligent discussion more nuance, and this was the very first comment I saw after I registered my account and I literally let a sigh of a relief. Thank you.

Sprotch 9mo ago
Yep - Reddit is unfortunately now where the simpletons hang out. This is far better, you can have intelligent debates
- jennyholzer3 9mo ago
  The people and LLMs that use this website are as numb-skulled, illiterate, and misanthropic as the people and LLMs that use reddit; In fact, these are the same people and the same LLMs.
  - llmslave2 9mo ago
    Yep, only real difference is Redditors now know they aren't smart or special, people here haven't figured that out yet.
- llmslave2 9mo ago
  There isn't really much difference between here and Reddit. Especially on political topics, you get the same tired and defeated arguments and opinions over and over again.
  - komali2 9mo ago
    To an extent yes, but individually I have much more nuanced interactions here with users. Whereas on Reddit I get dog piled by hundreds of black and white thinkers all circle jerking each other, making identical replies to my comments. Here I often will get a deep thread with one user that's quite interesting, even if we disagree in many ways. It's also usually polite for the most part.

Sprotch 9mo ago

Exactly. And worse, it’s violating international law just because you can. This will be used by Putin and China etc to justify ever worse actions

mupuff1234 9mo ago
Russia is already doing horrible things without this pretext, so I dont think this argument holds.

JonoBB 9mo ago

Putin and Xi must be ecstatic at the leverage this gives them.

kwanbix 9mo ago

Maduro is a dictator and a criminal - there is no doubt about it. He is an illegitimate president who has systematically violated the rights of the Venezuelan people. He has bought off the military, the judiciary, and other key institutions, hollowing out the state to ensure his grip on power. His regime has also supported and benefited from the existence of drug cartels in Venezuela as another mechanism to maintain control and stay in power. Together with Chávez, Maduro has ruled the country for more than 27 years, a period marked by countless atrocities against the population, from forced disappearances to torture and rape. The result is one of the largest humanitarian and migration crises in modern history: more than 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country to escape the regime. The international community has proven itself unwilling to act. The UN will do nothing. NATO will do nothing. No one will. We were, and perhaps still are, watching Venezuela turn into another Cuba, with one crucial difference: Venezuela sits on vast oil reserves. The "Crazy Red" is a pig, but at least he is the only one willing to confront Maduro. This may end up being the only genuinely positive thing he does during his presidency. Yes, the attack is not "ideal". But in an ideal world, there would be no dictatorships, there would be no Maduro. And I say all this as a South American with family in both Colombia and Venezuela. EDIT: this is written by the Vzla admins in Reddit: Foreigners, if your opinion comes without ever meeting a Venezuelan part of the biggest diaspora of the 21st century, I would advise against commenting. You might deserve a ban from this subreddit, thank you for your attention to this matter.

Art9681 9mo ago

We have different definitions of sovereign state apparently. "In his time in office, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has stolen two presidential elections, electoral monitors and human rights groups contend, while jailing critics and overseeing an economic collapse that caused eight million Venezuelans to emigrate, including to the U.S. But in some ways, Maduro is more safely ensconced than ever, with most opposition leaders in exile and Venezuelans too fearful to protest as they once did. The problem for those who see hope in the military rising up is that Maduro has surrounded himself with a fortress of lieutenants whose fortunes and future are tied to his, from Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López to generals, admirals, colonels and captains throughout the armed forces." https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-coup-trump-battle-96da0d5d https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-coup-tru...

Noaidi 9mo ago
I am going to assume that if you were old enough at the time that you thought Iraq had WMD's? How people can just read one article and think they know the world is fascinating to me.
- buzzerbetrayed 9mo ago
  Hilarious how this is coming from someone that just assumed a 20 year old belief of a person they don’t know
cataphract 9mo ago
What's that have to do with it being a sovereign state? By that standard, neither Russia nor China are sovereign states. And it's not like the US gives a shit about democracy outside its borders. The CIA overthrew Jacobo Árbenz in the 50s, supported the military coup in Brazil in 1964, pinochet and Hugo Banzer in the 70s. This is normal behavior for the US in Latin America. It's nothing to do with concern for Venezuela's citizens.
ibejoeb 9mo ago
There's really no benefit in arguing on the basis of the definition of sovereignty. There is no definition. It's a self-evident state: if you assert that you are sovereign, and you can back it up, then you're sovereign. That's it.

mihaaly 9mo ago

This is agression in its purest form. They want something, they have the means to take it, and so they take it. With no regards to others, others can fck themselves in fact. They proclaimed in loud enough and often enough in the past months. As every agressors they can hammer together some form of excuse for doing so. Just like anyone else in similar situation did throughout the history. One of them was the leader of Germany once and was called Hitler. But we can name lots of other enemy-of-the-humanity viles from Japan, Russia, Mongolia, etc, etc. the line is long for the despicable beings.

Noaidi 9mo ago

No no no no. We get to have an opinion of Maduro and we should because you have an opinion by saying it is a wrong. This is not a "regardless" situation. Bookmark this because the support for Maduro AND socialism in Venezuela is strong. They will never let you see socialism succeed because then all our own oligarchs would be out on their a$$e$. This is nothing but some trumped up capitalist Monroe Doctrine BS. Watching all the Venezuelan CIA toadies on the news this morning was so infuriating. Both Edmundo González and María Corina Machado are fascists right wing creeps that were working with the US for this to happen.

grumple 9mo ago

This is a core problem of international politics. We allow brutal dictatorships to continue subjugating tens of millions of people and killing millions in the name of convention. Our international organizations (the UN in particular) are basically ruled by authoritarian regimes. Is there no justification for external powers to effect regime change? We just have to wait and watch as the dictator kills a ton of people? Oh, and of course there is Maduro's support for Putin via sanctions evasion. Even now, Venezuelans face a brutal security force that is likely to retain power, but hopefully that power fragments. Imo we should have done this right after the last election which Maduro stole.

amanaplanacanal 9mo ago
Something like 50% of the population of the world live under rulers who were not democratically elected. Should the US taxpayers fund all of their removals? On top of that, removing a ruler without any plan for follow-up frequently makes things worse, not better. We seem to have already forgotten that removing the leadership of Iraq led to the rise of ISIS and its horrifying consequences.
- grumple 9mo ago
  > Something like 50% of the population of the world live under rulers who were not democratically elected. Should the US taxpayers fund all of their removals? If it's in our interest, absolutely. Venezuela nationalized (which is a nice way to say they stole) American oil interests and companies decades ago, has assisted Russia in flouting US sanctions, and has in part enabled the drug cartels. Each of those things cost us money. We're also getting a ton of immigrants from Venezuela that we have to spend money dealing with. Venezuela could also be a much better trading partner for us in the future with a liberal democratic society. All of that is directly in the best interest for the US. Believe it or not, sometimes our interests lie outside our borders. Isolationism is a failed policy by every nation that tries it, and this is something that used to be taught to every school child in America about our past policies. It's a shame those lessons seem to have been forgotten by our people. > On top of that, removing a ruler without any plan for follow-up frequently makes things worse, not better. We seem to have already forgotten that removing the leadership of Iraq led to the rise of ISIS and its horrifying consequences. This is absolutely true. You have to destroy the security forces as well, and support the elected democratic leadership. We may fail to do so in this case.

rambojohnson 9mo ago

Whether Maduro is corrupt, authoritarian, or illegitimate by your definition doesn’t suddenly make an undeclared foreign military strike to seize a sitting head of state acceptable. Sovereignty isn’t a reward for good behavior. It’s a constraint meant precisely to prevent powerful states from unilaterally deciding which governments get removed by force. If the standard is “we can capture leaders we deem illegitimate,” then you’ve effectively endorsed a world where power, not law, decides regime change. You can oppose Maduro and still acknowledge that abducting a head of state via air strikes destabilizes a country of 30+ million people and sets a precedent that will be used by actors far less selective than the U.S. Two wrongs don’t cancel out just because one feels morally satisfying. of course, we all drink the American imperialism koolaid here.

xvector 9mo ago
> then you’ve effectively endorsed a world where power, not law, decides regime change. This has always been the case throughout the vast majority of human history including current day. You are sovereign if you can prove it, and you aren't sovereign if you can't. "International law" is something superpowers ignore at will. It is not "wrong" or "right", it simply is.

dismalaf 9mo ago

Russia already attempted it, failed, and now are into the 4th year of their debacle. The US pulled it off in one night. The only thing it reinforces is the US' military superiority.

evan_ 9mo ago
Pulled what off? Russia was trying to occupy Ukraine, not just kill Zelensky (though they’d obviously like to do that). Trump announced that the plan is to “run Venezuela” but there are no troops on the ground, the US controls no territory. This isn’t The Wizard of Oz where you kill the wicked witch and the flying monkeys leave. This is only just starting. High probability that trump gets distracted by something else and forgets, but if not welcome to the next three years of your life.
- dismalaf 9mo ago
  You don't remember the initial hours of the war where Russia attempted to take over Hostomel airport and land commandos there? And Ukrainian intelligence stating that Zelenskyy was the target? No, Russia attempted it, failed, moved goalposts, failed again, and keeps moving goalposts to save face.

throw0101a 9mo ago

An observation: > This argument means that any time a president wants to invade a country "legally," he just has to get his DOJ to indict the country's leader. It makes Congress' power to declare war totally meaningless. * https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/2007450814097305734#m https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/2007450814097305734#m Also, the irony: > the administration's position is that American courts can hold any president accountable for crimes, except the American president * https://x.com/SevaUT/status/2007433614657552640#m https://x.com/SevaUT/status/2007433614657552640#m

erkt 9mo ago
Might makes right.
- toomanyrichies 9mo ago
  Remember this energy when someone stronger than you decides they want your wallet.
  - tekknik 9mo ago
    this is why people carry guns in america
    - baby 9mo ago
      I thought these were for mass shootings
      - casey2 9mo ago
        Maybe we should let people learn that actions have consequences. The kind and uplifting are seldom shot. Take Isabelle Robinson from parkland. Paraphrasing: "It's not my responsibility to "befriend" a person who is showing violent red flags; it’s the school’s job to intervene and provide professional help or remove the threat." So she did notice the red flags, but didn't do anything, she believe the school should do something not her. The failure in this line of reasoning is that every institution is made up of individuals, if they all think the same way nothing will change. This is literally a school shooting victim saying she doesn't believe that she should personally have to pay... well she didn't have to pay as much as some of her classmates. The school of will find their own people to blame. Pretty much every major religion teaches something like: If they slap one cheek show them the other, and that we are all one. Nevertheless, very few people will take any amount of responsibility for another "individuals" actions. The logical conclusion is that we sit in silod VR pods until the life support systems fail

stickfigure 9mo ago

If two wrongs didn't make a right, we wouldn't punish people who commit crimes. It should be up to the Venezuelans to decide who leads them. Maduro decided to ignore the will of the people when he held power through clear and blatant election fraud. If some sort of global public service could reach out and punish all politicians who do this, the world would be a better place. If you are unfamiliar with Venezuela, this is a good primer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZHXW1vOBI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZHXW1vOBI4 From a few days ago, "The Crisis in Venezuela. Explained." It's from Warfronts, one of Simon Whistler's projects. He is neither American nor lives in the US.

tdeck 9mo ago
So if China came in and "helped" the Venezuelan people to get rid of Maduro, you'd feel the same way? Of course not.
- stickfigure 9mo ago
  What on earth? Of course I would feel the same way.

linhns 9mo ago

Agreed. Watching the worldwide reactions so far, it’s surprising to see the RN (hard-right) in France most vocal in condemning.

qaq 9mo ago

For starters even EU does not recognize Maduro as legit head of state

martin-t 9mo ago

> Two wrongs don’t make a right. I hate this statement with a passion. Let's ignore the politics of the current situation for a while and look at the first principles of right and wrong. 1) When somebody knowingly and intentionally hurts another person without a valid reason, that's wrong. 2) Now the aggressor is in the wrong and requires punishment (there are multiple purposes to punishment: taking away any advantage gained by the offense, further disadvantaging aggressors, compensation for the victim, retribution, deterrence, etc.). 3) A punishment is just if it's proportional to the offense but only those with sufficient certainty about the extent of the offense, about the offender's identify and his guilt can carry it out. Usually, in western style societies, courts serve this purpose but courts are a legal concept, justice is a moral concept. Morally, the punishment can be carried out by anyone who satisfies the criteria, there's nothing to put one person above another morally. Legality has multiple tiers: tier 1 is individuals, tier 2 is states. States are a tier 2 institution imposed on tier 1. There is no tier 3 court-like institution which can be imposed on tier 2 entities.[0] Does that mean wrongs by tier 2 entities should go unpunished? No. They often do but there's no moral principles saying that it has to be that way, let along that it should be. 4) Punishment by its nature is the act of intentionally and knowingly hurting another person. But it's not wrong because unlike in point 1), it has a valid reason. *What some people consider the second wrong is not actually a wrong.* [0]: You could think of international organizations but they don't have a monopoly on violence above state level and therefore no actual mechanism for enforcement.

annexrichmond 9mo ago

Would you have said the same thing in the 40s if the US were able to capture Hitler?

nag34 9mo ago

[dead]

MisterMower 9mo ago

You’ll hear a lot of the same people decrying this action simultaneously calling for the assassination of Putin. The cognitive dissonance is something to behold.

OCASMv2 9mo ago

Arresting the leader of a narco terrorist tyranny allied with even worse powers like Iran, China and Russia is in fact a good thing.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

yibg 9mo ago

There are also reports of 40 something people killed. Doesn't that amount to basically (mass) murder? There is no declaration of war, so you can't really call them civilian casualties.

woodpanel 9mo ago

> head of a sovereign state Err > Since 2019, more than 50 countries, including the United States, have refused to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s head of state. Including the EU and its member states > a country of 30+ million people If those 30 M being the remainder after ~8 M fled the country (20% of the population) within the last 10 years, the „destabilization“ was already there.

randyrand 9mo ago

If he committed crimes against the USA, it shouldn’t really matter what his title is. The USA has a duty to uphold its laws. The EU does the same. Putin has a warrant for his arrest in every EU country, and they are legally allowed to extract him from russia AFAIK.

PlanksVariable 9mo ago

I do not acknowledge that. If you want to make an argument that overthrowing a dictator is always wrong on principle, go ahead. But I will not accept this as axiomatic. Claiming this could “destabilize” the country suggests that the country is stable. It’s not. You mention the 30+ million people who live there, under the dictatorship, but ignore the 8+ million who have fled the country in recent years and the instability that has unleashed on country and the entire region.

tekknik 9mo ago

should this same logic apply to someone like say, Hitler? if you hide behind the “sovereign nation” (while denying the US the same) then you can justify all sorts of atrocities.