Comment by serial_dev
4 days ago
While it's true that so far they only removed Maduro, removing a sitting president and his wife is a show of power, it's a "we do whatever we want". What is stopping the US to remove the next person, and continue doing so until as they find someone that they like? Or to organize an up-rising or a coup? The writing is on the wall.
This already likely was a coup. They knew exactly where Maduro was and were able to get in and out, with no air defense issues, no alarm issues, and all presumably with just a small commando group. This isn't like grabbing Osama who was relatively alone on a compound - this is the current President of a country, who was already probably quite paranoid, and who now was under active threat and certainly behaving accordingly. Doing all that as an outsider is basically impossible, so they must have had substantial amounts of insider help, which is essentially the definition of a coup.
And the media is already reporting that 'somehow' all of his inner circle seem to have survived.
They blew up the air defences and reportedly had help from a CIA informant, but there's nothing to indicate that it was a coup.
True but you don't need advanced defense to take out slow moving helicopters, the fact that nobody used manpads is extremely suspect. Also in syria the russians did token airstrikes while jolani's forces blitzed through the countryside.
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That was only to save face. It was part of a negotiated exit.
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To be fair, an illegitimate president, who was being protected with forces from a foreign (to them) govt. A LOT of people in and from Venezuela wanted Maduro out. The dancing in the streets are a pretty big indicator of this. And it's quite probable there were insiders involved that helped this operation happen.
Venezuela was a functioning democracy until a short number of years ago, when Maduro stole the election through clear and blatant fraud.
Not every country is Iraq or Afghanistan. At least here it's fairly clear that removing Maduro reflects the popular will of Venezuelans.
One could easily ask the same question about the US. With congress having abdicated it raises the legitimate question of exactly what the US is now.
Among my European friends, no one considers the USA to be a legitimate democracy any more. The USA has for us devolved into a bandit state.
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> With congress having abdicated
Historically in the American Republic, this has been true more often than not. There's a reason something taking "an act of Congress" is not a new expression for difficulty.
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That is rubbish. I loathe Trump more than most, but there's no serious claim that he wasn't freely elected in 2024. There appears to be a lot of buyer's remorse and we'll see what happens in the mid terms. But (sadly) Americans asked for this and they got it.
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History is filled with countries that wanted their leader gone, but rejected foreign influence.
I think most Venezuelans want freedom, prosperity, peace, and sovereignty.
I’m not sure in what order.
Time will tell if this move brought them any closer to those goals.
It's still military interference in a soverign nation to effect regime change.
Nevertheless, if you genuinely believe in the principles of democracy, this is a win.
It would have been better if Maduro had respected the choice of Venezuelan voters. But that didn't happen, so here we are.
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That just shows that popular will is not a justification for something. If the popular will was self destructive would a powerful entity be justified in giving them what they desire?
I agree. “Wisdom of the crowd” is the least useful aspect of democracy. “Broad support” and “bloodless regime change” are probably the most useful.
Eh, Saddam Hussein wasn't terribly popular. History is full of awful people being toppled and situations further degrading. Sometimes horrifically.
Iraq was never a democracy. It bounced from monarchy to military rule to one party rule to Hussein's personal dictatorship.
Venezuela had a... let's call it "respectable" democracy since the late 50s. Chavez did it no favors but it didn't completely collapse until Maduro.
If Venezuela recovers and improves, are you willing to fundamentally change your opinion about US interventions?
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The issue with regime change is whether there's enough political cohesion in a country's population after a despot / autocrat is removed.
"The opposition" is rarely a large and representative enough group to effect national power transition. (Btw, thanks for flagging that incorrectly as affect, Apple)
Especially in multi-ethnic states, most cohesive national identities are forged through extremely popular singular leaders.
Unfortunately, those are exactly the same leaders external regime-change initiators are wary of (too independent).
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The popular will is the woman the majority voted for. Trump already said she will not be allowed to run the country, that the US will and that we will help them develop, read steal, their oil.
The majority voted for Edmundo González, and María Corina Machado has called for him to be recognized as the leader of the nation.
It's complicated because Maduro banned her from running in the last election (and still lost anyway). In a just world maybe she deserves the position. But if we want to restore democracy in Venezuela, González would be a natural place to start (along with new elections).
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For what it's worth he did stop the Taliban from raping the wives and daughters of the opium farmers. Obviously not for humanitarian reasons but I was rather fond of how he dealt with it even if for the wrong reasons.
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> This looks a lot like when the U.S. & Israel were running dry on interceptors last year, and made a deal with the Iranians to pretend to blow up Fordow in exchange for ceasing hostilities.
Do you have a citation for this? (Genuinely curious)
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Honestly can't tell if troll or schizo.
The even weirder option is that they may be right and that I can no longer tell the difference with 100% accuracy. This is very annoying.
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I guess we'll see if Trump's blustering that he'll install American oil execs in Caracas pans out, won't we? Given that Chinese officials met with Maduro just before all this, I'm open to the idea that some kind of deal has been made to hand Latin America to the U.S. in exchange for our forbearance elsewhere in the world, so we might see something more serious, but at this point we just have the removal of a single head of state under extremely suspicious circumstances.