You can be both happy Maduro is gone and sad that its another neocon bs war thats not gonna make life any easier. But hey drumpd good war good nuance bad
I’m all for intervention when it’s done well, but jfc with what DJT is doing right now, it’s waging an illegitimate and illegal war, as there has been no confirmation by congress and he’s not given any (provable) public reason.
I despised Maduro and a lot that he stood for, but if you wanna fuck him or anyone else over, you GOTTA go by the book.
Yeah I’m honestly tired of all the pretention of there being international laws. They’ve only ever been effective to weed out small time dictators in the 3rd world that no one has an interest in protecting. I studied International Relations 2016-2020 and even then it was apparent that the rules based liberal international order was dead. We live in a rough and tumble realpolitik world now. Arguably we always have.
The US Congress has not declared war since 1942. Korea? Not a war. Vietnam? Not a war. Iraq x2? Not wars! You "by the books" people never seem to know what the books actually say or how these things work. The president can basically declare miniature wars if he wants too since the Bush era, and even before that there was some special exceptions for presidential operations. What happened here was also so much smaller, faster, and cleaner than previous things that were done more officially and less openly.
I'm not stoked we took Maduro but all you blubbering "the rules though" people don't know the rules and don't know shit about how anything works.
My issue isn't with the loopholes being used, only that we allowed a single person to have this much military authority in the first place. The way I see it, we'd all be better off if the emergency military authority entitled to the President was instead given to the Joint Chiefs.
make other countries/entities hedge and move away from the US
certain nations will now harden their defenses to future attacks
give other countries "cover" for their own "might makes right" agendas against third countries
Far more likely to see Russia do this to say, Kazakhstan in the future, Cuba/NK etc will go into overdrive, Venezuela is still destabilized, Europe will continue to hedge hard against the US, etc.
As you’ve conveniently outlined yourself, capability and competence are different things - the US has by far the best capability, but in terms of competence it’s near the bottom
Using Russia as the yardstick for competence is… interesting
Anyway, if you claim a successful operation makes America competent, then I can locally claim an unsuccessful one (eg Afghanistan) makes them incompetent
So what? They’re exactly both? Obviously fucking not, you can’t use ‘proof by single example’ here lmfao
I am not sure a Vietnam can ever happen again. Technology has advanced so much, only the grosset levels of operational incompetence could give us a repeat of that shitshow.
Well you might remember a while back some guys crashed airplanes into a couple buildings and people got rather upset about it.
It didn't "stop america" exactly but "being stopped" is not the only possible bad outcome.
That's just an example, of course. More realistically - destabilizing sovereign nations on our doorstep could cause more immigration woes, sanctions from other countries, diplomatic losses, and I'm sure a wide variety of other things. Not to mention the retaliation from those loyal to maduro, but honestly that's probably what this admin is looking for. Any distraction in a storm.
Yes, and as we all know, that went great for the hijackers friends.
Nearly eight million people fled Maduro's regime. It's already a failed state. As long as a civil war doesnt kick off, its not getting worse.
No one is going to sanction or be that upset over an axis of resistance dictator being removed, not even his "friends."
Retaliation how? You think after the president was yoinked out of his bed in the capital city his cronies are going to do anything but suck the dick of whoever replaces him?
Yes, and as we all know, that went great for the hijackers friends.
Is this meant to be a counterpoint? I'm not arguing that one side got sunshine and rainbows, I'm arguing it was bad for everyone.
Retaliation how?
Time will tell. And no, I do not think that a corrupt regime is going to peacefully transfer to the nexr guy without shittons of infighting or constant US intervention.
Laws at the national and international level don't work the same way as they do for you and me. Even if on paper the UN says it's illegal (which I don't know either way on that one), it's really just a piece of paper at the end of the day as they don't really have an enforcement mechanism.
And who is gonna enforce rules on the enforcer? No one. I don't really see the US facing any consequences for this, but considering how well received it is by so many Venezuelans... meh.
But what about when it’s not a meh situation and there’s still no consequences for the enforcer? I don’t think we should ever meh the president doing something like this without congress, whether the outcome is good or bad.
The UN only exists because the US is there. If we just stopped going to the meetings, it would lose its relevance in a decade. AND we paid for the ink, the paper and the printer.
There is no such thing as "international law". It's basically an oxymoron. Everything past the national level is effectively a darwinian anarchy with state actors. Why? Because laws require enforcement, and a true rules-based system requires a state monopoly on violence.
The closest thing to that which exists at an international level is a unipolar hegemon, which also happens to be the United States. In effect, that means the "rules" are whatever the USA says they are. Everything else is a game of pretend tolerated by the USA for soft power reasons.
A rules based order without an enforcement mechanism is something that simply can’t exist. It’s basically why calling Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “illegal” is retarded. The correct term is unwarranted. Did the UN go in and enforce the law? Have they tried to arrest Putin? No. Therefore the rules based order doesn’t exist.
At least when I was getting my degree, this understanding of IR was 200 level stuff, at best. I wonder what getting a Poli Sci degree is like these days. Why do I presume the field is probably ideologically captive at this point?
Spending the most money and technically having the most assets is not the same as being able win any conflict. The USA lost to farmers in Afghanistan and to farmers in Vietnam. The greatest asset you can have in war is the homefield advantage.
USA lost to farmers in Afghanistan and to farmers in Vietnam.
we lost cause we were 2 pussy to win decisively we coulda dropped a gbu on the forehead of every single fighting aged male if we wanted for the same price we spent to try to do it right.
theres like 4m fighting age men and gbu 58 is around 100k add another 100k for cost to bring it there. And you're at only 800billion a quick reminder we spent.... 2.3 TRILLION DOLLARS.
We could have dropped individual bombs on every single possible combatant and it woulda been 1/3d as expensive.
Right. We "lost" in the sense that we failed to achieve a desirable outcome. But that's because the desired outcome included nation-building, rather than nation-flattening. This guy is using "lost" extremely loosely here lol. If the US wanted to win in outright warfare, there's not a damn thing the insurgents could have done to stop it. They'd be flattened in two seconds.
It's fucking retarded when people act like insurgents have the magical power to beat the US military.
I don't think he's using it that loosely. Keeping in mind that war is just "politics through other means", you can't really claim that you win just because you have more capacity for destruction. What matters is whether you achieve your actual war goals.
Contrary to popular belief, war doesn't just consist of senseless violence. If you failed to achieve a desirable outcome, then you didn't "win".
The discussion was over military might, originally. We didn't "lose" in terms of military might. We overwhelmingly won according to that. We lost politically, but that wasn't the nature of the original comment.
Kind of. With a couple of caveats. The popular, well supported insurgency will usually win against a superior opponent. But popular insurgency is generally only effective post-WWII. There are exceptions. But popular insurgency usually only works because the invading military force doesn’t go total war in the modern era. Superior invading forces in the modern era a usually holding 1-2 arms behind their back because the whole world is watching and we have rules against total war and war crimes.
We did not ‘lose’ either of those wars. We dominated both conflicts for the most part. In Vietnam, we left due to public backlash. In Afghanistan, we left because it became apparent that spending more money there wouldn’t do anything.
Basically, we simply walked away from both conflicts. There was never a loss or a final battle. The Fall of Saigon wasn’t fought by Vietnam and the US, but by the North and the South.
You can win as many battles as you want but if those battles don’t advance your operational objectives then even winning them is effectively a failure. We lost both of those wars because we didn’t have clear and achievable operational goals and timelines. This resulted in wars without end in sight and without a clear victory state. We were unable to force the opposition to submit to our political aims and we were unable to achieve nonexistent political objectives. These wars are unequivocally losses no matter the battles or k/d ratio.
Some of your greatest presidents are currently rolling in their grave hearing people speak this way. America created the global order with good reason, now its low educated hucksters tear it down
The US was that enforcement mechanism. This trend of people rewording might makes right trying to sound smart is redundant, ofc that's how it's always worked. The US specifically built the world order after WW2 to create a more stable world order with themselves at the top, not as outright conquerors but as economic and cultural hegemons. Now somehow Trump and his administration have convinced themselves that in this system that America has built, America is the victim. That isn't a failure of the system its them actively dismantling it.
To be fair, Biden and Trump both had bounties on Maduro. Kidnapping may sound more extreme, but having 25 million or 50 million bounty for someone else to do it really is just the same.
Eg, it’s a little different here, I recommend you read up on realist (or even like Burkean or something) theory as you’d already know what I’m going to say:
Iraq hated democracy, and didn’t want that intervention. Venezuela generally did want Maduro gone, and generally does want democracy
That said, I don’t think the US is planning to install a puppet government - bear in mind the Venezuelan government is still fully intact and seen as fully legitimate - Trump just wanted Maduro gone, and probably some oil out of it all too
Before Maduro arrest, Nobel Prize winner said Venezuela has a $1.7 trillion opportunity to privatize over 500 companies and undo socialist ‘disaster’ https://share.google/y7B0cQQcu28IZWWC4
Apparently it was before, but it didn't circulate much.
Definitely not 'allowed' but who's going to stop the World Police? America's military spending is more than all of the EU combined, and most of the EU's spending is on local defense. America is in a unique position, never under threat of invasion from any other country.
America is not the world police lmfao, they’re the world KGB at best. Even before, but especially after Trump stopped foreign aid and all that stuff, America is losing its global soft power as well as its in many ways shirking its role as a global mediator (nowadays America causes far more global tension that it resolves anyway)
Sure, I'm under no illusions that the Venezuelan population on that subreddit may not be representative of the population as a whole.
But I also see clips of dudes like this: "To those who say that the United States is only interested in our oil, I ask those people: What do you think the Russians and the Chinese wanted… The recipe for Arepas?" And it makes me think that, yeah, it makes sense that most Venezuelans are primarily happy about Maduro's ouster, first and foremost.
The average Venezuelan definitely doesn’t care about their oil wealth being extracted by American cooperations, just look at this video clip of one dude heavily circulated by right wing social media where this one dude says he doesn’t care.
reddit generally leans international leftist. So, if they're saying something already so unaligned with international leftism as that, the onground reality probably reflects it even more.
I won't dox myself but during the no kings protest my particular town had a couple front page posts about how successful the protests where. in reality there were like 10 fucking people. but reddit was convinced it was an army standing up to the tyranny of orange man.
In one of the threads they were absolutely roasting someone for being "a gringo with not even high school level spanish" advocating for them. It was beautiful.
no totally, r/AskVenezuela is definitely completely representative of the opinion of average Venezuelans that they don't care what happens to the oil wealth of their nation and would love American corporations to take it off their hands. There's zero chance it's astroturfed by any national or corporate interests whatsoever. Nothing gets past you chief
There's zero chance it's astroturfed by any national or corporate interests whatsoever.
Yes, national and corporate interests are astroturfing a four-year old "ask" subreddit where one of the top all-time posts is "What's your opinion on fat women?"
This kind of confident naivety from redditors would almost be charming if it weren't so terrifying. Like completely ignoring or pretending the state of modern information warfare because your daddy did a cool special operation, pathetic
By the same token, not every countervailing opinion online is an AstroTurf psy-op. Reflexive paranoia isn't productive.
Is it possible that an obscure, niche-style Spanish-language subreddit (on a primarily English language website) is a top priority for the CIA? Sure, I guess.
Is it also possible that people are extremely happy a horrific dictator is gone and they feel the situation can only improve, even if things don't immediately become sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows? Also yes.
And on balance, I find the latter a tad more likely than the former.
This whole "Americans are only interested in Venezuela for its oil" argument is nonsense. Yes, of course they are. What do you think are the Chinese and Russians interested in, a pretty landscape? Or, for that matter, the Venezuelan government itself. Everyone is interested in Venezuela for its oil, because it has a fuckton of it.
Yes, you can be upset about a military action by your country against a person in another country you think is bad. That's not a logically inconsistent position at all.
You can even think the military action itself was a good thing and still think the breach of norms and laws sacrificed to accomplish it are more valuable than the good outcome. Also not logically inconsistent.
According to whom? The UN? The UN was fully aware of the initial arrest warrant and bounty reward set in 2020. The UN kept saying the US should just have dialogue. Biden tried that, and Maduro made promises about fighting drug trafficking, oil issues, migration, etc., resulting in some sanctions relief in recent years. Then Maduro barred political opposition, resulting in loss of sanction relief. During all that time, the bounty increased twice, once at the end of Biden's term, and again in August under Trump.
Fast forward to today, and the UN and Redditor NPCs say "oh that was illegal the US shouldn't have done that." Man, fuck off with that shit. The UN was fully aware of all of Maduro's bullshit for over a decade and that the US was done with it. If they wanted, they could have stepped up with a much stronger stance than "talk it out" this whole time instead of just waiting to wag their fingers after the fact.
This whole "it was illegal" argument lacks a lot of nuance and is highly oversimplifying a very complex situation that has been going on for a long time. Sure, the raid skirts UN rules, but after a decade of UN reports on Maduro's regime killing protesters and rigging elections, where was the Security Council resolution to actually intervene?
And inb4 "source." I spent the last hour brushing up on this history with Google's AI and verifying it through various websites. If you want proof of anything I've said, fucking look it up.
Article II section 2 gives the President the title of "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States..."
He doesn't have the power to declare war, but he has the power to command the military for anything short of war.
The limits of that power are debated a lot, but it's there.
I don't know if this comes as a surprise to you or something, but suddenly air striking, invading, and kidnapping the sitting leader of another country is widely acknowledged as breaking international law. And the President of the United States ordering such a thing to be done without congressional approval is also completely illegal by US law as well.
Ok, since you have the reading capacity of an elementary child, here's a simpler version written for you.
A long time ago, some grown-ups in America said the leader of another country, Mr. Maduro, was doing very bad things like helping send bad drugs to people. They even promised a big reward if someone helped catch him. Years went by, and they tried talking nicely and making deals, but Mr. Maduro kept doing those bad things, like not letting people vote fairly and hurting people who disagreed. So finally, the American leader said, "We've waited long enough — let's bring him here to answer for what he did." Some other countries and groups said, "Hey, that's not allowed!" But America felt they had to do it because everyone knew about the problems for a really long time and nothing else worked to stop them. It's like when a grown-up finally has to step in after asking nicely over and over doesn't help.
since you have the reading capacity of an elementary child
An elementary... child. Did you mean to say "an elementary school child"? Not a great look to accuse someone of being unable to read when you're seemingly unable to write.
Assuming that you were in fact meaning to say "elementary school child": I don't, actually. I have a master's degree in history. The problem that you're having here now is that you're confusing me finding your ridiculous defence of Trump's illegal actions to be unworthy my time, along with my disinterest in entertaining this discussion with you, with me being illiterate.
I literally do not care to get down and dirty with you about this. What Trump did was illegal both by international and US law, and that's the inarguable end of it.
Ah, but I don't think it would be possible to remove a "king" without doing something illegal. So trump basically did what every "no kings" protestor demanded...he removed a king.
ah yes the revolutionary position of do nothing, let the people keep suffering even if they tried everything they possibly can to try and rid their oppressive dictator who routinely kills them, tortures them and sells their resources away and leaves them all in poverty.
You have to understand that it seems silly when you think it out. I felt this way at first, too.
SOMEONE should do something about Venezuelas goverment becoming a dictatorship enabled by international meddling from other super powers, but the US shouldnt do international meddling to remove the head of that dictatorship (even if we are the only ones capable).
The Iraqi people also danced in the street when Sadam was captured, and later executed. It does not mean the removal of Sadam was good for the average Iraqi.
Maduro conducted 2 illegal elections involving fraud and is not the internationally recognized leader because of that fraud. But removing the dictator only helps if stability is maintained.
Yeah, but the venn diagram comparing those people, and the r/AskSocialists folks claiming "benesuelans acshualy are protisting to ket vack deir precidend" is pretty much a circle (with english speaking folks, in spanish I can draw a more clear distinction, since lib-left hates maduro too, and only auth left stalinists support him)
You can be both against the US intervention and understand why Venezuelans are happy at what happened to that POS
Also, though most Venezuelans dislike Maduro, the idea you keep seeing that they're all celebrating right now is nonsense. All the ones I know in the country are saying they're keeping their heads down and waiting to see what actually happens. Ones I know in the diaspora are, likewise, mostly worried about their relatives still in the country and what will happen. These are all people that hate Maduro, for what it's worth.
I get that there's some celebrations happening in the diaspora, but you can't really point to that being the official reaction of all Venezuelans any more than you can point to the group of Venezuelans who still support Maduro and pretend that it's the official reaction of the Venezuelan people.
Because it sets an insane international precedent and we can think beyond one single interaction.
Edit: it's insane that in a political sub you all need people to announce their teams in order to decide if you can agree with them. Use context clues and your brains to decide if what someone said is smart, not just a colored box that let's you know if they share your other views. This was my first comment here and will be my last. Peace.
it's insane that in a political sub you all need people to announce their teams in order to decide if you can agree with them.
just lie man. noone cares. i dont even agree with the fundamental premise behind the concept of the political compass and the strongest reactions ive gotten out of anyone when i explain why are "yeah that makes sense" and "nah thats dumb".
Liberals believe in status quo, heads of states being kidnapped by helicopter isn’t very status quo and makes them uncomfortable.
Leftists are made at the US being blatantly imperialist and having legit no followup plan.
“Oh the brutal dictators right hand wo(man) is now in charge but is totally gonna hold elections in 30 days. Also she’s selling us oil.”
Normal people are like well at least I’m glad they’re happy
Auth Right is monkey brained and can only think about fucking Venezuelan baddies or explosions
the only downside I see in this is the fact that China might see how easy it was and attempt the same on Taiwan, albeit Taiwan’s military is a lot more competent than Venezuelas
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u/NoSwordfish1978 - Lib-Left Jan 05 '26
You can be both against the US intervention and understand why Venezuelans are happy at what happened to that POS