alt Hacker NewsTwo wrongs don’t make a right.
Regardless of your opinion on Maduro, you can still acknowledge that the head of a sovereign state being captured in an unannounced/unnamed military operation by a superpower is wrong from a principled standpoint, and that it’s destabilising a country with 30+ million people if not the entire region.
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An observation:
> This argument means that any time a president wants to invade a country "legally," he just has to get his DOJ to indict the country's leader. It makes Congress' power to declare war totally meaningless.
* https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/2007450814097305734#m
Also, the irony:
> the administration's position is that American courts can hold any president accountable for crimes, except the American president
> Regardless of your opinion on Maduro, you can still acknowledge that the head of a sovereign state being captured (...)
Note the US administration contends that he wasn't the legitimate head of state. [1] [2]
[1] https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/marco-rubio-nicolas-m...
[2] I'm (obviously) being sloppy regarding head of state vs. head of government.
I see the point you're trying to make, but I'm not fully convinced it's as black and white as you make it out to be. I think we can both agree that lawfully and democratically elected leader of country A having a lawfully and democratically elected leader of country B captured is bad, for all the obvious reasons. What about dictators? What about military coups and forcefully reversing them? Election fraud? Etc. Whether any one country should be global police or not is a very difficult question to answer, but at the same time I could easily see situations where some of these could be beneficial for the greater good.
Maduro is not the head of a sovereign state. The President of Venezuela is Edmundo González, the winner of their last election[1]. To know if this violates Venezuela's sovereignty, you would have to ask their President. Personally, I fully support this operation, unless their President indicates otherwise. It's a good day for democracy and freedom.
[1] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-are-the-odds-...
Regardless of your opinion of maduro, you can still acknowledge that if the head of a sovereign state enacts policies that result in the mass emigration of 8M to neighboring countries, destabilizing all of them [1],[2] in the process, exporting criminal enterprises, any affected head of the affected government certainly has casus belli on said head of state.
The policy of no aggression applies. If a government, thru its actions (or inactions) causes massive aggression and hurt on your own people, then its your *duty* as elected official, to stop it and protect your citizens
Self-defense is literally the most important mandate a government can have.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/crime-migration-spect...
[2] https://www.cgdev.org/publication/data-against-fear-what-num...
If two wrongs didn't make a right, we wouldn't punish people who commit crimes.
It should be up to the Venezuelans to decide who leads them. Maduro decided to ignore the will of the people when he held power through clear and blatant election fraud. If some sort of global public service could reach out and punish all politicians who do this, the world would be a better place.
If you are unfamiliar with Venezuela, this is a good primer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZHXW1vOBI4
From a few days ago, "The Crisis in Venezuela. Explained." It's from Warfronts, one of Simon Whistler's projects. He is neither American nor lives in the US.
There are also reports of 40 something people killed. Doesn't that amount to basically (mass) murder? There is no declaration of war, so you can't really call them civilian casualties.
Whether Maduro is corrupt, authoritarian, or illegitimate by your definition doesn’t suddenly make an undeclared foreign military strike to seize a sitting head of state acceptable. Sovereignty isn’t a reward for good behavior. It’s a constraint meant precisely to prevent powerful states from unilaterally deciding which governments get removed by force.
If the standard is “we can capture leaders we deem illegitimate,” then you’ve effectively endorsed a world where power, not law, decides regime change. You can oppose Maduro and still acknowledge that abducting a head of state via air strikes destabilizes a country of 30+ million people and sets a precedent that will be used by actors far less selective than the U.S.
Two wrongs don’t cancel out just because one feels morally satisfying. of course, we all drink the American imperialism koolaid here.
We have different definitions of sovereign state apparently.
"In his time in office, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has stolen two presidential elections, electoral monitors and human rights groups contend, while jailing critics and overseeing an economic collapse that caused eight million Venezuelans to emigrate, including to the U.S.
But in some ways, Maduro is more safely ensconced than ever, with most opposition leaders in exile and Venezuelans too fearful to protest as they once did.
The problem for those who see hope in the military rising up is that Maduro has surrounded himself with a fortress of lieutenants whose fortunes and future are tied to his, from Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López to generals, admirals, colonels and captains throughout the armed forces."
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-coup-tru...
I do not acknowledge that. If you want to make an argument that overthrowing a dictator is always wrong on principle, go ahead. But I will not accept this as axiomatic.
Claiming this could “destabilize” the country suggests that the country is stable. It’s not.
You mention the 30+ million people who live there, under the dictatorship, but ignore the 8+ million who have fled the country in recent years and the instability that has unleashed on country and the entire region.
I think heads of state bearing personal responsibility for misconduct is an excellent precedent that I would love to see applied much, much more widely. Preferably to the superpowers, especially if said leader were to say, for a totally-hypothetical example, recklessly create a massive security risk near our borders for the sole purpose of benefiting a foreign interest group… but I’ll take what I can get. I think the Sword of Damocles is missing all too often from high society. If life and death decisions, don’t come with life and death risks, then I think they become taken too lightly. I think we are too quick to insulate high society from the consequences of their actions.
Maduro is a dictator and a criminal - there is no doubt about it.
He is an illegitimate president who has systematically violated the rights of the Venezuelan people. He has bought off the military, the judiciary, and other key institutions, hollowing out the state to ensure his grip on power.
His regime has also supported and benefited from the existence of drug cartels in Venezuela as another mechanism to maintain control and stay in power.
Together with Chávez, Maduro has ruled the country for more than 27 years, a period marked by countless atrocities against the population, from forced disappearances to torture and rape.
The result is one of the largest humanitarian and migration crises in modern history: more than 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country to escape the regime.
The international community has proven itself unwilling to act. The UN will do nothing. NATO will do nothing. No one will.
We were, and perhaps still are, watching Venezuela turn into another Cuba, with one crucial difference: Venezuela sits on vast oil reserves.
The "Crazy Red" is a pig, but at least he is the only one willing to confront Maduro. This may end up being the only genuinely positive thing he does during his presidency.
Yes, the attack is not "ideal". But in an ideal world, there would be no dictatorships, there would be no Maduro.
And I say all this as a South American with family in both Colombia and Venezuela.
EDIT: this is written by the Vzla admins in Reddit: Foreigners, if your opinion comes without ever meeting a Venezuelan part of the biggest diaspora of the 21st century, I would advise against commenting. You might deserve a ban from this subreddit, thank you for your attention to this matter.
A wrong, followed by another wrong, followed by another wrong, followed by another wrong, followed by yet another wrong...
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"Flood the zone" is a political strategy in which a political figure aims to gain media attention, disorient opponents and distract the public from undesirable reports by rapidly forwarding large volumes of newsworthy information to the media. The strategy has been attributed to U.S. president Donald Trump's former chief political strategist Steve Bannon."
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Pay attention to the context of this moment. The timing of this invasion is no coincidence.
I'm guessing willingly Maduro surrendered as he took the cash offer from Dec 1, 2025 while publicly rejecting it. After all, he left with his wife.
> “You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now,” Trump reportedly said, offering safe passage for Maduro, his wife and his son “only if he agreed to resign right away”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/01/trump-maduro-u...
I need you to know that the discussion on this news on Reddit today was the last straw for me, there is no nuance. It’s just simple minded left, and right. I asked ChatGPT to help me find a site that might have more intelligent discussion more nuance, and this was the very first comment I saw after I registered my account and I literally let a sigh of a relief. Thank you.
Arresting the leader of a narco terrorist tyranny allied with even worse powers like Iran, China and Russia is in fact a good thing.
Agreed. Watching the worldwide reactions so far, it’s surprising to see the RN (hard-right) in France most vocal in condemning.
Also the Chavistas have broad support in the population. To point where they won several elections.
For starters even EU does not recognize Maduro as legit head of state
USA just pardoned leader of drug mafia and for.er president along with stream of major criminals.
We all know any attempts to frame USA choices as noble right now is dishonest.
Exactly. And worse, it’s violating international law just because you can. This will be used by Putin and China etc to justify ever worse actions
> head of a sovereign state
Err
> Since 2019, more than 50 countries, including the United States, have refused to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s head of state.
Including the EU and its member states
> a country of 30+ million people
If those 30 M being the remainder after ~8 M fled the country (20% of the population) within the last 10 years, the „destabilization“ was already there.
Putin and Xi must be ecstatic at the leverage this gives them.
It's hard to ignore that the country being targeted holds the world's largest oil reserves. In a global context where China has become one of the top oil importers, that makes the situation look less accidental.
America is not a principled country. It has for a long time now operated on the protection racket model: externalizing costs onto citizens.
In the American model, anything that could destabilize society is the fault of an individual who should be punished, ironically this means collectives can do no wrong. Leaving AI safety up to people living in such a country is frightening.
Race is the one exception (maybe sports teams too), but that definitely doesn't help Venezuelans
It's just realpolitik laid particularly bare. The major complaint seems to be that the paperwork wasn't done 'right' here, not much else eh?
What is the real difference between Iraq and what just happened, except this was arguably done much cleaner, and with less BS (no having to come up with Yellow Cake, or fake WMDs, for example).
This does have the effect of hopefully waking up anyone who is still confused, but I doubt it.
Would you have said the same thing in the 40s if the US were able to capture Hitler?
You’ll hear a lot of the same people decrying this action simultaneously calling for the assassination of Putin. The cognitive dissonance is something to behold.
This is a core problem of international politics.
We allow brutal dictatorships to continue subjugating tens of millions of people and killing millions in the name of convention. Our international organizations (the UN in particular) are basically ruled by authoritarian regimes. Is there no justification for external powers to effect regime change? We just have to wait and watch as the dictator kills a ton of people? Oh, and of course there is Maduro's support for Putin via sanctions evasion. Even now, Venezuelans face a brutal security force that is likely to retain power, but hopefully that power fragments.
Imo we should have done this right after the last election which Maduro stole.
should this same logic apply to someone like say, Hitler? if you hide behind the “sovereign nation” (while denying the US the same) then you can justify all sorts of atrocities.
> Two wrongs don’t make a right.
I hate this statement with a passion.
Let's ignore the politics of the current situation for a while and look at the first principles of right and wrong.
1) When somebody knowingly and intentionally hurts another person without a valid reason, that's wrong.
2) Now the aggressor is in the wrong and requires punishment (there are multiple purposes to punishment: taking away any advantage gained by the offense, further disadvantaging aggressors, compensation for the victim, retribution, deterrence, etc.).
3) A punishment is just if it's proportional to the offense but only those with sufficient certainty about the extent of the offense, about the offender's identify and his guilt can carry it out. Usually, in western style societies, courts serve this purpose but courts are a legal concept, justice is a moral concept. Morally, the punishment can be carried out by anyone who satisfies the criteria, there's nothing to put one person above another morally.
Legality has multiple tiers: tier 1 is individuals, tier 2 is states. States are a tier 2 institution imposed on tier 1. There is no tier 3 court-like institution which can be imposed on tier 2 entities.[0] Does that mean wrongs by tier 2 entities should go unpunished? No. They often do but there's no moral principles saying that it has to be that way, let along that it should be.
4) Punishment by its nature is the act of intentionally and knowingly hurting another person. But it's not wrong because unlike in point 1), it has a valid reason.
*What some people consider the second wrong is not actually a wrong.*
[0]: You could think of international organizations but they don't have a monopoly on violence above state level and therefore no actual mechanism for enforcement.
This is agression in its purest form.
They want something, they have the means to take it, and so they take it. With no regards to others, others can fck themselves in fact. They proclaimed in loud enough and often enough in the past months.
As every agressors they can hammer together some form of excuse for doing so. Just like anyone else in similar situation did throughout the history. One of them was the leader of Germany once and was called Hitler. But we can name lots of other enemy-of-the-humanity viles from Japan, Russia, Mongolia, etc, etc. the line is long for the despicable beings.
No no no no. We get to have an opinion of Maduro and we should because you have an opinion by saying it is a wrong.
This is not a "regardless" situation. Bookmark this because the support for Maduro AND socialism in Venezuela is strong. They will never let you see socialism succeed because then all our own oligarchs would be out on their a$$e$. This is nothing but some trumped up capitalist Monroe Doctrine BS.
Watching all the Venezuelan CIA toadies on the news this morning was so infuriating.
Both Edmundo González and María Corina Machado are fascists right wing creeps that were working with the US for this to happen.
[dead]
What principles are you citing? Are they principles that someone made up out of nothing and that no one has ever consistently applied?
Is Maduro the head of a sovereign state? Says who?
Russia already attempted it, failed, and now are into the 4th year of their debacle. The US pulled it off in one night.
The only thing it reinforces is the US' military superiority.
If he committed crimes against the USA, it shouldn’t really matter what his title is. The USA has a duty to uphold its laws.
The EU does the same. Putin has a warrant for his arrest in every EU country, and they are legally allowed to extract him from russia AFAIK.
Not only the region... A worry is the step will encourage other regimes that feel they have might to remove leaders they do not like and replace them with marionette-like figures. Also, here we have another permanent member of UN Security Council making decisions to intervene without consulting the UN or even their own constitutional bodies...
(My opinion of Maduro is that he was not a legitimate leader.)