I think most people agree about Maduro being horrible to Venezuela, but this has nothing to do with that. If this is legitimized, any president can be kidnapped by the US at will. This is a very dangerous precedent which a lot of people will regret when the bully turns against them and not their enemy.
Well for starters he quite clearly stole the election so he is not even the legitimate President. Beyond this he faces indictment for a large number of crimes in the United States and has been extradited to face trial for them.
It's just an excuse to remove an opponent from power and install a puppet. Believing that that's the reason is of extreme naivety. This does not mean that Maduro being out of power is a bad thing, but believing this has anything with law or democracy is ridiculous.
A country indicted a foreign leader for crimes their nation will not prosecute.
Just the other day, half of the Maduro supporters here on HN were expressing outrage over US interference regarding just this the same thing, in a reversal of principles and roles. What we are witnessing on this board is a raw demonstration of politics and power. Who or what principle you support merely depends on where folks sit.
Both sides of this debate make fair points-- what's regrettable is that so many participants seem unwilling or unable to recognize they are reflexively taking the position opposite the US, or Israel and lack any sounder organizing principle.
yeah it feels like the sort of thing that will go sideways easily, I get the "optimistic" angle who doesn't love strong men being removed from power, but it seems more like a recipe for civil war that we're forced to be heavily involved in
will all of the military and paramilitary forces there suddenly become to compliant? will other nations try to turn it into a proxy war to drag the us down possibly as payback for Ukraine?
maybe everyone moves on I have no idea, I'd personally rather just not be involved
Sorry, can't trust claims from a brand new account created in response to a contentious political event. I saw a lot of non-organic stuff like this when the US invaded Iraq too.
Reasoning like this is part of the reason why history keep repeating itself. Completely ignoring how previous US led decapitations turned out, and just hoping this time will be different.
It should not be contentious at this point, the US only cares about the geopolitical value of Venezuela, and if supporting another dictator helps towards this end, then that's what will happen.
The sheer ignorance . To form such an opinion, with such confidence and literally the only grounding is a few women he/she has dated. We are living in an idiocracy.
And the sentence "What really stood out to me was how intelligent Venezuelans are"... no shit, Sherlock, people are intelligent, we're all one species, what did he expect?
Dude, theres not much point in arguing that. You see this kind of 5th column in the aftermath of most popular revolutions, from Iran to Chavez in Venezuela. A whole horde of folks who were part of the previous elites (or more likely, their functionaries) who decamp en masse to the US, where they proceed to spout unhinged propaganda ad infinitum.
A tell tale is how they tend to completely overlook (to the point of pretending it isnt happening) the role of economic sanctions, blockades & other forms of coercive pressure on the economies of those countries. Instead, putting it all down to local actions by local actors.
There won't be much mention of any of the social improvements & economic uplift which Chavez in particular was able to do, before the external economic pressures became overbearing.
When you can control the narrative on both sides of the equation to this extent, kidnapping the leader of a sovereign (until today) country seems almost normal.
Jeffery Sachs summed it up best a couple of hours ago. The US is not even pretending to be a constitutionally-governed state any more, and this is just 1 sign of that.
I think I kind of understand why the Soviets were able to industrialize that fast and win an existential war against the mighty Wehrmacht.
The so called purges from late 20s to to the 30s were Stalin eliminating these 5th columnists.
Didn’t Trump explicitly say the US is putting Maduro’s second in command in charge? If so, that makes any benefits to the people from removing Maduro pretty unlikely. Besides removing sanctions, assuming the new dictator kisses the ring.
How much of this is if Hong Kong "friends" abroad hypothetically backed the UK invasion of Hong Kong, I just have no respect for this "my friends from that country validate simplistic politics" type of ad hominem. Victims and escapees of oppressive systems are filled with bitter and anger but that doesn't make their solutions automatically the right one.
I think most people agree about Maduro being horrible to Venezuela, but this has nothing to do with that. If this is legitimized, any president can be kidnapped by the US at will. This is a very dangerous precedent which a lot of people will regret when the bully turns against them and not their enemy.
Well for starters he quite clearly stole the election so he is not even the legitimate President. Beyond this he faces indictment for a large number of crimes in the United States and has been extradited to face trial for them.
It's just an excuse to remove an opponent from power and install a puppet. Believing that that's the reason is of extreme naivety. This does not mean that Maduro being out of power is a bad thing, but believing this has anything with law or democracy is ridiculous.
A country indicted a foreign leader for crimes their nation will not prosecute.
Just the other day, half of the Maduro supporters here on HN were expressing outrage over US interference regarding just this the same thing, in a reversal of principles and roles. What we are witnessing on this board is a raw demonstration of politics and power. Who or what principle you support merely depends on where folks sit.
Both sides of this debate make fair points-- what's regrettable is that so many participants seem unwilling or unable to recognize they are reflexively taking the position opposite the US, or Israel and lack any sounder organizing principle.
As usual, things are complex. Maduro out of power is a good thing, the way of removing him is dangerous.
> If this is legitimized
Russia tried to do this to Zelensky and Bush Sr. did do it to Noriega in 1990.
I would advice them to get ready for what comes next, past experience says it will not be good.
yeah it feels like the sort of thing that will go sideways easily, I get the "optimistic" angle who doesn't love strong men being removed from power, but it seems more like a recipe for civil war that we're forced to be heavily involved in
will all of the military and paramilitary forces there suddenly become to compliant? will other nations try to turn it into a proxy war to drag the us down possibly as payback for Ukraine?
maybe everyone moves on I have no idea, I'd personally rather just not be involved
Sorry, can't trust claims from a brand new account created in response to a contentious political event. I saw a lot of non-organic stuff like this when the US invaded Iraq too.
Reasoning like this is part of the reason why history keep repeating itself. Completely ignoring how previous US led decapitations turned out, and just hoping this time will be different.
It should not be contentious at this point, the US only cares about the geopolitical value of Venezuela, and if supporting another dictator helps towards this end, then that's what will happen.
The sheer ignorance . To form such an opinion, with such confidence and literally the only grounding is a few women he/she has dated. We are living in an idiocracy.
And the sentence "What really stood out to me was how intelligent Venezuelans are"... no shit, Sherlock, people are intelligent, we're all one species, what did he expect?
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Dude, theres not much point in arguing that. You see this kind of 5th column in the aftermath of most popular revolutions, from Iran to Chavez in Venezuela. A whole horde of folks who were part of the previous elites (or more likely, their functionaries) who decamp en masse to the US, where they proceed to spout unhinged propaganda ad infinitum.
A tell tale is how they tend to completely overlook (to the point of pretending it isnt happening) the role of economic sanctions, blockades & other forms of coercive pressure on the economies of those countries. Instead, putting it all down to local actions by local actors.
There won't be much mention of any of the social improvements & economic uplift which Chavez in particular was able to do, before the external economic pressures became overbearing.
When you can control the narrative on both sides of the equation to this extent, kidnapping the leader of a sovereign (until today) country seems almost normal.
Jeffery Sachs summed it up best a couple of hours ago. The US is not even pretending to be a constitutionally-governed state any more, and this is just 1 sign of that.
I think I kind of understand why the Soviets were able to industrialize that fast and win an existential war against the mighty Wehrmacht. The so called purges from late 20s to to the 30s were Stalin eliminating these 5th columnists.
3 replies →
Didn’t Trump explicitly say the US is putting Maduro’s second in command in charge? If so, that makes any benefits to the people from removing Maduro pretty unlikely. Besides removing sanctions, assuming the new dictator kisses the ring.
How much of this is if Hong Kong "friends" abroad hypothetically backed the UK invasion of Hong Kong, I just have no respect for this "my friends from that country validate simplistic politics" type of ad hominem. Victims and escapees of oppressive systems are filled with bitter and anger but that doesn't make their solutions automatically the right one.
Look at how well Iraq and Afghanistan turned out. Good times ahead.
Afghanistan even has the same government again, which is even more ridiculous.
Sure, but there's no longer an Afganistan disasterous occupation gap.
The opinions of the womanizer who is surprised by how intelligent the right wing Venezuelan expats he knows are, oh yay now we’ll understand things
Some people just went open season on creative writing in here.
Which expert analyses were you expecting to find here?