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This seems like the type of comment the parent comment is referring to. It's day 1 of the invasion. Why have you concluded the US is unable to put anything in t
by dpedu 9mo ago
This seems like the type of comment the parent comment is referring to. It's day 1 of the invasion. Why have you concluded the US is unable to put anything in the place of Venezuela's previous government?
- coldpie 9mo ago[flagged]
- CjHuber 9mo agoI still don’t get these kinds of comments. Is it supposed to be funny because it’s so hyperbolic? I’d hope debates here would at least acknowledge that he’s pursuing some broader aims even if most of it is probably just to benefit his friends. Does anyone really think his actions lack any ulterior motives especially with how the cabinet is selected? You can‘t deny that he has more agency then a Government-by-committee-by-proxy like Bidens final years were like, where it really felt like it was dementia taking over. I feel it’s absurd to claim that a president is incompetent for not serving his people if that is not his goal in the first place.
- sigwinch 9mo agoWithout Greene, the campaign goals of MAGA wither. The “I don’t start wars; I end wars” president doesn’t even have the fortitude to start by asking Congress. It’s not as much hyperbole as it sounds.
- CjHuber 9mo agoWere they really campaign goals or were they just marketing material to win an election? It makes so much more sense to not view everything MAGA as stupid „because they are lying“. Well they’ve won the election. Is that not the goal of a campaign? I‘m not saying lying is good, but it’s not like a only minority of politicians do that and it’s not like only a minority of politicians then do the exact opposite of what they promised and incur damage to their country. Some do it by benefiting themselves like Trump, some do it by being to indecisive and weary like Merkel or Biden
- lostlogin 9mo agoWhat are you arguing? That the attack is ok if there was a reason for it, even if that reason differs from what we have been told?
- CjHuber 9mo agoI‘m not making a moral judgement here. I‘m saying even if the attack happens for different reasons than those you have been told (honestly a US classic), the search for a coherent reason behind it (no matter if justifiable) cannot end by saying „It doesn’t serve us. He is a stupid president, he promised us something and did something else he’s so incompetent“ because incompetent has to mean in regards to something. And if his goal really is narcissistic validation and money, well then he surely either is very lucky currently or not incompetent.
- sigwinch 9mo agoOk it sounds like the best drawn-out support for your argument goes like this: Since the Nov 21 call with Trump, Maduro and his wife knew to keep their bags packed. Maduro never had a strong hold on the generals, so gave them profitable organizational roles with the Sinaloa cartel. Trump was told that the cash offer had the best chance at good news in January. At least, he understands a cash offer even if he doesn’t know why he got an MRI or what for. So the military buildup and strikes fulfill something else. What was it?
- sigwinch 9mo agoOk, so you hope debates here should charitably acknowledge wider aims. I think we can agree that campaign promises rarely align with those. But pardoning Juan Orlando Hernández means that precisely none of this is about Maduro at all.
- CjHuber 9mo agoNo that’s not what I mean. I‘m saying we should acknowledge them, not necessarily by doing so charitably. My point is that you cannot have productive debates about politicians if you think they all act to benefit their people and if they do something that contradicts that suddenly everyone says they are incompetent or stupid. Only then we can start asking what is he trying to accomplish with that. Which could be an interesting debate. What is he trying to accomplish for US citizens with that is a stupid question
- throw0101a 9mo ago[flagged]
- throw0101a 9mo ago[flagged]
- CjHuber 9mo agoI don‘t disagree with that, in fact that’s exactly what I‘m saying. If someone becomes president to achieve those goals, do you really call him incompetent for building his cabinet around achieving that very goal?
- lostlogin 9mo agoI think that most people would define the quality of a president based on their performance for their country. If a leader pillages the country and flees with the money, I doubt that they would be praised for their excellence ‘because they archived what they set out to do’.
- CjHuber 9mo agoThat‘s entirely true, but my entire point is you cannot judge somebody as incompetent based on something they are not trying to achieve. You can say he‘s a bad president, makes sense because a good president serves his country. But you can’t say he is an incompetent one just because he has ulterior motives.
- lostlogin 9mo ago> you cannot judge somebody as incompetent based on something they are not trying to achieve Competency in a job isn’t defined by what the individual wants, it’s defined by the job description.
- CjHuber 9mo agoThat only works if you are trying to fulfill your job role. So would you say a quiet quitter is necessarily incompetent for example?
- coldpie 9mo agoThe dude literally has dementia. It's not hyperbole, it's a basic fact. Like, 2 minutes of watching him try/fail to speak makes this clear.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- sigwinch 9mo agoDuring the 2024 campaign, oil executives met at Mar-a-Lago and agreed to pay $1B to Trump’s campaign. It is one or more of those men who will be interfacing with the Venezuelan generals about shifting their oil away from China.
- tasuki 9mo ago> The president is in late-stage dementia, and his cabinet couldn't put together a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. Well, they just managed to organize the kidnapping of a head of state!
- dionian 9mo agoThe same people were probably like "Joe's fine"
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- text0404 9mo agoYou think the business executives in this administration managed to organize the kidnapping of a head of state? Trump pointed at it and a massive machinery which was built over hundreds of years made it happen. People who have been doing this kind of work for decades organized this. Good thing those same business executives are also hell-bent on destroying the machinery, I suppose.
- LastTrain 9mo agoI conclude that you cannot apply consequentialism when the outcome is unknown, so the US has done something immoral and illegal, end of story.
- bluecalm 9mo agoIdk man, if my country was ruled by a dictator who faked elections I would be very happy to see some outsiders removing him. Kidnapping (and hopefully jailing for a long time) anyone who is in power by cheating the election is a big moral win in my book.
- bjourne 9mo agoDo you have any evidence of the election being faked? Other than the US says so?
- bluecalm 9mo agoI mean look up why recent Nobel Prize winner got the prize. It's not just US saying so.
- bjourne 9mo agoIn other words, no, you don't?
- chasil 9mo agoIs this a trustworthy source? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd1d10453zno https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd1d10453zno
- bjourne 9mo ago> The US secretary of state has said there was "overwhelming evidence" Venezuela's opposition won the recent presidential election. As I wrote, "the US says so" is not evidence.
- fn-mote 9mo ago> Why have you concluded the US is unable to put anything in the place of Venezuela's previous government? Any student of history would be skeptical. The US record after interference in a country is abysmal. Relatively recent failures: Iraq, Afghanistan. Less recent failures: Nicaragua and throughout Central America.
- adventured 9mo agoIt took decades for the US to stabilize itself as a nation after its birth. Why would you think Iraq would find it easy to stabilize itself post Hussein, such that you'd declare their future void already. Iraq is not yet a failure and is dramatically more stable than it was under Hussein (dictatorships bring hyper instability universally, which is why they have to constantly murder & terrify everybody to try to keep the system from instantly imploding due to the perpetual instability inherent in dictatorship). Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Kuwait, and most of Eastern Europe (which the US was extremely deep in interfering with for decades in competition with the USSR). You can also add Colombia to that list, it is a successful outcome thus far of US interference. I like the part where people pretend the vast interference in positive outcomes don't count. The US positively, endlessly interfered in Europe for the past century. That interference has overwhelmingly turned out well.
- peter422 9mo agoAnd what about the precedent it sets for other world powers? Why shouldn't Russia or China just do the same and interfere with the leadership of countries they don't like. Also it is impossible to argue the cost of the war in Iraq was worth the benefit, even if we agree Iraq is in a better place now then it was under Hussein.
- anomaloustho 9mo agoJust noticed the “whataboutism”. I don’t have a particular take on the comment above but those countries do those things in their own parts of the globe. The government of nations is anarchy and in anarchy the only rule is that “might makes right”. Some seem to have a view that there is a world government and that there are “rules” when in reality there are none.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- paganel 9mo ago> Why have you concluded the US is unable to put anything in the place of Venezuela's previous government? Because they failed doing that in Iraq and Afghanistan, both cases where they did try, and there is also Libya (where they did not try all that much, if at all, I'll give you that). I mean, they did put some of their puppets in both Kabul and Bagdad, but the puppets in Kabul eventually got swept by the Talibans, while the puppets in Bagdad switched over to Iran's side by 2015-ish.
- lostlogin 9mo ago> the puppets in Kabul eventually got swept by the Taliban Eventually? Withdrawal was announced in May 2021 and was to occur over a few months. By late August the Taliban had full control. What a complete fiasco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_U.S._troop_withdrawal_from_Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_U.S._troop_w...
- somewhereoutth 9mo agoAs far as I can ascertain, there is no invasion. Just a special ops kidnapping. It is unclear what will happen next, but likely the regime or large elements of it will survive. Perhaps a more moderate faction will take control? That would be the best case scenario.
- bluecalm 9mo agoSurely the best case scenario is the regime collapsing, all collaborators of Maduro ending up dead or in jail and then the guy who actually won the election or a women who would have won it ending up in power?
- somewhereoutth 9mo agoOf course that would be great, but pretty unlikely with just a decapitation strike. Like most dictators, Maduro was not holding the country in a superhuman iron grip, but instead the representative of various elites and factions that kept him in power for their own interests. However given how easy this operation has been, there is a suspicion that one or more factions colluded with the US, and may now be consolidating control - and then maybe a peaceful transition back to democracy? We shall see.
- dpark 9mo ago> there is no invasion. Just a special ops kidnapping When one nation’s military illegally enters another nation’s sovereign territory to carry out military actions, that’s usually called an invasion.
- somewhereoutth 9mo agoNot really - an invasion implies holding ground, which isn't the case here.
- dpark 9mo agoAh, the time-honored tradition on the Internet of making up one’s own definition and confidently asserting that everyone who disagrees is wrong. Of course everyone knows it’s trivial for police to apprehend home invaders because invasion implies that they stay after they break in.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]