Comment by woooooo
6 days ago
Well, as always, who decides the leader is illegitimate? Are the Saudis illegitimate, according the the rubric we put on Maduro?
The UN deliberately has no mechanism for this because it's a talking shop intended to help avoid war by providing a talking venue. That's the whole idea, they're not the world police, there is no such thing. They're a forum.
I'm absolutely not defending any given dictator but history shows that every attempt to remove a dictator "for the greater good" is usually 1) selfishly motivated and 2) backfires horribly.
Yeah, ask any Chilean how the installation of Pinochet worked out.
I'm arguing against the US installing leaders in Latin America, sorry if I was unclear. I happen to have some Chilean friends and stories from them, from the Pinochet era, have helped shape my perspective.
Yes, I was just adding some context for any MAGA here that might genuinely think that US intervention in Latin America has ever been a good thing.
Good for South America? Or good for the USA?
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The country remains polarized, so the answers might surprise you.
Also 3) not ever about the the greater good, that’s a pretext
How exactly did the removal of Hitler backfire?
I think WW2 had a little bit more justification than whatever this is.
Then maybe you should rephrase your comment, because this is what I've replied to:
> every attempt to remove a dictator "for the greater good" is usually 1) selfishly motivated and 2) backfires horribly.
Imagine if Hitler was removed before... Instead, foreign powers favored appeasement and trade; conservative elites thought they could control him, Nazi propaganda and terror consolidated power, and Germans were disillusioned with democracy after WW1.
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It’s quite reductionist to compare this Maduro situation to WW2.
Genocide being the exception, perhaps.
Basically, "leave it to the population to sort out themselves, even if they've lost the democratic means to do so," up until a government has gone so insane it's massacring its people, or other people.
So we should have done a much bigger intervention in Syria, much earlier? We should intervene in Sudan right now? We should finally intervene in Russia where they slaughter their own children and Ukrainians in a genocidal war of aggression? We should finally intervene in Palestine and destroy Hamas (and in Iran and destroy their Mullah-sponsors) who've committed a genocide on October 7th, killing thousands of Israelis and ten thousands of Palestinians?
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