Comment by eastbound
7 days ago
Let’s be honest, that was a crazy operation. I wonder whether they really secured all chances of success, or just winged it with chances of not depositing the leader, and him being able to summon his diplomatic relations into 50 countries declaring war to the USA.
While on their way out, if the USA could set everything back to IPv6, that would be nice.
The outcome is less-crazy if one views it as assisting a palace-coup, partnering with a bunch of Venezuelan government and military insiders already seeking to depose Maduro, able to subtly clear the path and provide intel.
I personally think it is both. I think CBS article disclosed that CIA had someone in the inner circle. That, however, does not really take away from how well coordinated it actually was. That does not mean it was a good idea to do it. Just because I can run around naked does not mean I should..
If they did that then they did a bad job considering Maduros vp assumed power while also saying Maduro remains the actual president.
P.S.: In that scenario, it's quite possible for both groups of conspirators to benefit from denying it and saber-rattling:
* The (remaining) Venezuelan government gets to point to Big Evil America to unify (or crack-down-upon) an unhappy public, and they avoid being personally tarred as unpatriotic.
* Trump et al. get to "wag the dog" as distraction from crimes and mismanagement back home.
> him being able to summon his diplomatic relations into 50 countries declaring war to the USA.
As if. Dictators only do things that benefit themselves, and deciding to attack the US is suicide and/or world ending.
Took a long time to catch up with Bin Laden after he attacked the US.
Let’s be realistic.
Not easy to find one man in a haystack. Guerrilla warfare has always been insanely overpowered as a defense tactic anyways, as are terrorist attacks.
The US can realistically only be challenged militarily by Europe or Asia, assuming a unified continent, and the US is on the offensive. If it’s defensive, the US might put up a good fight against the rest of the planet.
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That was moreso about taking down the ORG before cutting its head. Unfortunately their radical ideology spreads with or without Bin Laden.
we don't really have a way to tell if it was even real, it would actually be a rather trivial operation for the government during those times and the entire thing could have just been overplayed and/or involved collaboration from all sides.
none of those documents exist since it was probably never documented to begin with so we will never know I guess.
They almost had him early in afghanistan but let him go.
No one would lift a finger for him. Russia just watched. The Chinese too. They may be allies in words but in the end each dictator just care about themselves. Just like how Trump wouldn’t help any ally unless he got something out of it.
Power wins in anarchy. International relations are anarchy. There is no actual international law.
> There is no actual international law.
There is, of course, both private and public international law. You don't know what you're talking about.
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Of course they didn't. While I can't imagine Russia is exactly happy that it lost an ally in the Western Hemisphere, this kind of action is very much aligned with Putin's multi-polar worldview where the great powers leave each other to play empire in their respective spheres of influence. It helps justify things like invading Ukraine. I can imagine some in the Chinese military are over the moon right now, taking notes on how to force regime change in Taiwan.
More importantly, Putin didn't really have an option to help.
They sent over like, maybe a couple Anti Air systems? But they really couldn't spare that many in the first place!
It's not like Russia can sustain serious power off the coast of the US.
The most he can do is complain. What's Russia going to do, sanction the US?
> While on their way out, if the USA could set everything back to IPv6, that would be nice.
You actually think the US would leave things better than they found them?
Only when it's oil infrastructure.
They never ‘leave’ that.