Comment by throw-the-towel
3 days ago
Not taking sides here, just trying to steelman: some Venezuelans might be so done with Maduro, that they consider US getting the oil profits to be a fair price.
3 days ago
Not taking sides here, just trying to steelman: some Venezuelans might be so done with Maduro, that they consider US getting the oil profits to be a fair price.
This is all irrelevant - it's completely unacceptable for the US President to send the military into another without Congressional approval, and to kidnap a leader at all (especially without a declaration or war or UN authorization).
The War Powers Act actually does allow this. Congress has to be back filled within 48 hours after the action (and they were). He can also station troops up to 60 days without congressional approval.
As Jonathan Turley reports https://jonathanturley.org/2026/01/03/the-united-states-capt... this operation will be justified as executing the criminal warrant (issued by the Biden DOJ and outstanding since 2029) and responding to an international drug cartel, a very similar legal framework to the one used against Noriega in 1989 - which was tested in multiple US courts. So like it or not there is longstanding court affirmed precedent supporting that earlier operation, which will now be used to defend the actions in Venezuela.
Does this mean trump will be pardoning Maduro on receipt of a sufficiently large bribe? That seems like the only explanation for recent pardon of former Honduran president Juan Hernandez.
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So a thought experiment: If China were to put out a warrant for Trump's (the most unpopular president in US History, someone the majority of Americans disapprove of, a convicted criminal, and a pedophile who raped young people and has not been brought to account for these crimes as of yet) under the pretense that some of his victims were Chinese nationals and then invaded the Whitehouse to forcibly remove him to China, would that also be legal and justified ? What would you expect the reaction in the US to be ?
To be very clear I do not support this -- out leaders should be held to account to their people, not foreign invaders deciding for us. Even if it seems unlikely that they ever will be, it's our process and people.
This argument doesn't really hold water because the jurisdiction of a nation isn't the whole world.
If we have a warrant for a Sovereign or someone else with Diplomatic Immunity we -- at the very least -- should not invade their territory to carry it out. That's not how the civilized society works, and that's not how we want it to work as evidenced by the thought experiment above.
If we are at war with a nation or people, and reject the premise of their fundamental sovereign or diplomatic nature of course it's a different story since we are talking about a fundamental disagreement of reality. There's a separate process for that weighty decision by the US people's representatives.
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"This paper we wrote shows the legal justification for the kidnapping, so the kidnapping we performed is completely legal."
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The USA does not have jurisdiction outside the US borders. Shocking, I know.
But it doesn't, so the charges of "possession of machineguns" [0] is an utter bullshit. Talk about kangaroo courts...
[0] https://xcancel.com/AGPamBondi/status/2007428087143686611
“ it's completely unacceptable”
How do you reach this conclusion that you can’t help suffering?
You act as if they don't have loopholes for this or that there will be consequences when the military industrial complex is behind things. Were there any consequences for Iraq WMD BS
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Why? It's not a war they were just capturing someone to face charges. In the same way we didn't need to declare war against Pakistan to go in and get Osama
Don't think we (Americans) would be happy if another country invaded and started capturing people to face trial in their country.
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Osama Bin Laden wasn't the leader of Pakistan, he was just hiding there.
Capturing the de facto leader (elected or dictator) of a country is an act of war.
You could argue the war is justified, or that this dictator was bad for both his country and the US, but it's still an act of war.
How come the US can engage in acts of war without legally declaring it? Shouldn't congress be involved?
We all mocked Putin's "special military operation", why are we not accusing the US of doing the same thing?
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> It's not a war they were just capturing someone to face charges.
Invading a foreign country with military force is a war even if the purpose is to effect an arrest. And when the President claims that the intent is also that the US will run the country afterwards, its even more clearly a war.
> In the same way we didn't need to declare war against Pakistan to go in and get Osama
Congress had already exercised its power to declare war with an open-ended declaration almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, which covered the operation direct against the head of al-Qaeda.
https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ40/PLAW-107publ40.pdf
charges for what? he is a Venezuelan in Venezuela. You can't say "he broke our laws" and take him to fucking New York.
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Bombing a capital city and kidnapping its political leader and hijacking its oil tankers is not the same thing at all. Not to mention Pakistan was and is officially an ally of America, and despite them harboring terrorists, officially Osama was a criminal there too.
Still waiting for the shoes to drop on Osama and Saddam.
Who is "we"?
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Completely irrelevant what “some Venezuelans might” want and literally can be used to justify anything if you accept it as a premise.
For example:
Not taking sides here, just trying to steelman: some Americans might want to sell their relatives into sex trafficking.
Can you qualify “some Venezuelans” in any meaningful way?
This framing implies that the US administration considered US or Venezuelan public opinion before taking this action.
We have no evidence of that.
Well at least the nearly 8 million who voted for the opposition in Venezuela and the nearly 8 million who have left.
Are you implying that a vote for the opposition is a vote for the US to take over?
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Admittedly I cannot, I'm not Venezuelan and not familiar enough with the country.
Some Taiwanese will welcome china,
Some ukrainians welcomed russia,
some polish will welcome russia,
some estonians will welcome russia
etc etc etc.
Look, you don't just regime change, It didn't work in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan. It only really kinda worked in Kosovo, but even then it was touch and go, require lots of troop time and a load of money and ongoing international police.
“We will be greeted as liberators”
Has not come to fruition for previous US regime change operations.
This kidnapping operation doesn’t give insight one way or the other into the will of the Venezuelan people. It, in fact, completely disregards it.
This is exactly what Putin said about Ukrainians living in the Donbas.
which was true
No this is a Russian canard and not true. In fact some of the fiercest resistance to Russian occupation came from the Donbas.
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And yet, it's not a justification for what was done there, and it's not a justification for what was done in this case either. Wasn't a justification in Iraq with Saddam for that matter. I remember the day the Iraqis pulled that statue down, they seemed very happy to be able to do that. And then...
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Some of the Austrians Wanted Hitler to annex them!
Didn't a lot of Austrians want that?
Didn't the East Germans later want to be annexed by West Germany?
Don't the people of both Koreas want unification?
if we’re going to steelman we have to acknowledge that many venezualans liked him too.
we can’t simultaneously say we don’t like corruption of socialist governments while literally bombing another nation and imprisoning political enemies just so we can have its oil for our cronies.
Trump said Machado doesn't have support to be leader and endorsed Maduro's VP as willing to work with the US. It seems unlikely the Venezuelan people are going to see any benefits here. They will get more of the same.
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There should be a sitcom where Assad, Yanukovich, Snowden, and the Venezuelan VP are sharing an apartment in Moscow. In the Christmas episode, Putin shows up and teaches them the true meaning of Christmas.
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Trumps approval rating isn't great either but I doubt many people would see that as justification for another country kidnapping him in the middle of night to charge him with "has an army with machine guns" before taking American oil
I say what goes around comes around.
It wouldn’t have been a justification before now, but he’s created the precedent. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
If Trump made himself king and dragged the US so far into corruption and poverty that another country could so easily capture us, yeah I'd be fine with them bagging him.
I suspect you'd be in the minority, but hey if he lives long enough you might just get your wish. He's off to a great start.
On top of that, I don't think the common Venezuelan laborer was getting much benefit out of the Maduro regime capturing the oil wealth. From the point of view of the less fortunate, there isn't much difference between a Venezuelan elite enriching themselves off the local oil vs an American elite enriching themselves off the local oil.
Right, that’s not the issue. The issue is national sovereignty. The US just started taking over South America.
Claims of sovereignty are meaningless, what happens is whether those claims hold up in real life, and in this case they clearly don't.
A country is either powerful enough to enforce sovereignty, or it is not actually sovereign; so this hand-wringing about "Venezuela's sovereignty" is meaningless. It's already been proven false, to some extent.
The US is free to do what it wants with Venezuela, or virtually any non-nuclear country in the world. Always has been, really. It simply doesn't exercise said power very often.
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There's a massive difference, and that difference is that American oil companies, unlike the Venezuelan state run industry, are actually very competent at extracting oil. This means more good paying jobs, more state revenue, and massive economic growth. Contrary to the claims of most of the economically illiterate morons commenting here, having a functional local oil industry run by foreign companies will actually be great for Venezuela.
I think you got it wrong. It might be better for Venezuela, but it will for sure be great for those companies.
your comment sounds alot like nationalist chest thumping, the reason they were unable to do much with their oil is much more related to the usa deciding they would sanction the country meaning basically worldwide they can't sell the oil
Definitely not, but the furthest away the ones profiting from something are, the worse it can get.
It is definitely not a guarantee that a local enriching elite will at some point lead to something better, but most examples that come to mind about "colonies" (places very far from a center of power), resulted in said places to develop much harder.
But neither the Venezuelan elite nor the American elite will tolerate any hint of democracy. And neither elite will be satisfied with merely exploiting the oil.