alt Hacker NewsReagan something very similar twice and it worked out reasonably(ish) fine.
Of course Venesuela isn't that similar to Panama or Granada in various ways. Given the massive amounts of internal issues, and insanely high levels of crime/murder removing the government and washing your hands might turn it into something like Haiti...
Fundamentally on the moral level removing oppressive tyrants like Sadam, Maduro, Gaddafi etc. is the right thing to do. Of course nobody ever figured out how to prevent the situation from getting even worse in the aftermath..
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Why aren't we getting rid of the Saudi, Qatari, Emirati, Egyptian, etc. governments?
> Fundamentally on the moral level removing oppressive tyrants like Sadam, Maduro, Gaddafi etc. is the right thing to do.
If the issue was what was “right” then Trump wouldn’t have cozied up to Putin and abandoned Ukraine, or cozied up to MBS and waved away his murder of a US journalist, and on and on it goes. This administration has zero moral credibility. I don’t know what will happen in Venezuela but we should all be skeptical of fruit from a poisonous tree.
I do concede that it is possible the situation will deescalate from here on out, but there is no possible way to be sure of that. Right now the situation is very volatile and could very easily spiral into a huge mess. MAGA people don't want to acknowledge that possibility, because they want to believe Trump is honest and competent.
We should just make them a territory like Guam and instead of assuming we'll fix everything and give it back, we'll just work under the assumption that we're keeping it indefinitely.
Examples of US-facilitated regime change that resulted in lasting stability/democracy are more the exception than the rule, when you look at the track record overall.