alt Hacker NewsA lot of Venezuelans are happy about it.
Maduro is not good for Venezuela.
The US should not be the decider of who stays in power on another country.
The president should not have the power to apprehend a countries president IN THEIR COUNTRY without a process thats more than just "I really want it".
The US is giving another clear message that it does not care about global order, just global control. We're back in the 70s.
There is ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelans, its a power play, if maduro played by the US rules, he would be in power regardless of crimes. Pinochet, The Brazilian regime are all here as testament to that.
I hope the power change turns out better for the Venezuelans. I hope this is a catalyst of change for a better government. Ideally one that does not sell itself to the US for legitimacy. I don't think that is the likely outcome.
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> There is ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelans
100x times this!
US administration doesn't care about the welfare of most human beings in the world (including in the US).
We saw it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia, Yemen and now Palestine. Having an assumption that this move was made for Venezuelans and now they're liberated from evil is wrong.
I see a lot of people posting about a lot of Venezuelans being happy that Maduro is out, and many using that as providing moral justification for the action. But this seems murky to me. If say the majority of the US population would be happy if trump is gone, does that justify some other country coming in and kidnapping him (leave aside the ability and consequence of this)? It doesn't seem like it.
> The US should not be the decider of who stays in power on another country.
As opposed to what? Who "should" be the decider? China? Russia? Maduro? The Venezuelan Military?
The alternative is not that Venezuelans choose who stays in power democratically. The alternative, as we just saw until now, is that the Maduro dictatorship maintains power through force.
I think a coup was forming regardless. Fort Tiuna where Maduro was is not near the coast. So basically no one heard/saw/detected the US forces coming that far inland. Also, most importantly, no one stopped them from leaving with their president.
The whole "we got him" is a bit fishy. I think the Venezuelan military (and the current vice president) wanted Maduro out. A coup would have been messy. So the US comes in and does them a favor.
If it's fair game to do this in Venezuela, it's fair game here in the US.
IMO this has nothing to do with Maduro. This is just the first step. It is about the US securing large reserves of oil. Don't get caught into the propaganda.
Alas, we're back to 1989. Bush did the same to Noriega in Panama when he stopped playing ball with the CIA.
> We're back in the 70s
To be fair we did almost exactly this in 1989 in Panama [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...
greenland must be having difficult discussions right now
Cuban forces with the help of Russia, Iran and China took control of Venezuela over 25 years ago, effectively looting that nation, and no one bitched about it.
As a brazilian, could you clarify what you mean by "The Brazilian Regime"?
Genuine question, the decades long dictatorship backed by the US military in 64 or the recent pressure Trump made to try and put Bolsonaro back into power despite his crimes?
> Ideally one that does not sell itself to the US for legitimacy. I don't think that is the likely outcome.
Lol this is already proven false.
The put the Vice President in power who is now coincidentally supporting what the US is doing, including sending oil companies in to as Trump put it “sell oil to the Chinese”.
>ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelans
Neither was doing that with other countries they ransacked. The other was pouring enough propaganda at you so that you think it is somehow different.
> There is ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelan
Depending on how cynical you are, you could say that all American administrations are like that. (I don’t think that’s quite true—I think Reagan/Bush had a genuine ideological vision of using foreign policy to promote democracy and capitalism around the work. But it’s certainly a common criticism.)
Why couldn’t this be resolved using the international institutions we already have? What needs to change?
It's debatable - to put it mildly - whether Maduro is the legitimate president of Venezuela.
>> There is ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelans,
I don't think this was a humanitarian mission. I'm speculating from Trump's perspective, Maduro was a major de-stabilizing factor. The Western world also seems to tacitly agree that the man had to go -- I don't think Maria Machado's recent Nobel Peace Prize was coincidence.
Given his 0/2 track record on targeted prosecutions I wonder what the chance is that Maduro wins in court. What the hell would happen then?
They brought a lot of drugs into the US, don't ignore that. The drugs are destroying the US teens.
Conceptually, tariffs could help manufacturing. The policy Trump actually enacts, massive and unpredictable tariffs on manufacturing inputs, turns out to destroy manufacturing. Conceptually, removing Maduro might help the people of Venezuela…
It is so crazy that he is not turning around and putting the World Peace Prize winner in place. Everyone can get behind that and it is probably the fastest way to getting oil companies in there anyway.
Whether Maduro was the legitimate president of Venezuela remains to be proved.
> if maduro played by the US rules, he would be in power regardless of crimes
This is the key. Trump loves dictators, no matter how they got into power. As long as they give him what he wants or he's afraid of them.
There's no power change, the core of your whole post is wrong
All of Maduro's people are still in power and the president just said the woman who actually won the vote is not suitable to be in charge
Good luck with the US running another country when we are cratering ourselves
Impeach him and send him to the Hague for trial if this was so justified
BTW they are now talking about Cuba, we are headed for WW3 by 2028
Don't celebrate early. It's all a Hollywood plot, just like 911. Only the innocent suffer
Maduro stole the election and no one in Venezuela could do anything about it. How exactly was Venezuela going to take care of it themselves?
Ultimately it's going to be outside actors, and no matter who it was, even the UN, Venezuela could just say we don't recognize your authority and nothing would happen
Easiest path from here on for the US is to cooperate with existing power structures in the resources grab/"sharing" + forcing some concessions, like increased efforts to fight against drug trafficking.
Trump also did not even inform the armed services or foreign affairs committees. He spoke to FOX before he spoke to Congress. It is not clear if he's done or if we just declared war. His public statement that the US will now be majorly involved in Venezuelan oil is both very telling and very mysterious. How the hell are we going to assert power over their industry without foisting a new, friendlier government?
“ The US should not be the decider of who stays in power on another country.”
This is a new opinion. What is your basis for not believing might makes right in an anarchic system?
> A lot of Venezuelans are happy about it.
Which Venezuelans? I ask because this exact same argument was used to justify the many failed assassination attempts, the Bay of Pigs debacle and sanctions on Cuba where many Cuban Americans were anti-Castro.
Now that might've been true but consider the source: many Cubans in America fled when Batista was ousted or in response to that. A famous example of that is Rafael Cruz, the father of Senator Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz famously said he hates communism because his father was tortured... by Batista [1]. And it's a failure in journalism that he wasn't challenged and lambasted for this idiotic take.
There are a lot of Venezuealsn in the US who justifiably fled the chaos there. But why was it chaotic? The US will try and tell you it's because of Maduro. But what about the sanctions? As a reminder, sanctions are a nice way of starving "we're goign to starve you and deny you medicine in the hopes you do what we want to the administration we can't otherwise topple".
Also, the US doesn't actually care about any of the crimes they accuse Maduro of. This is the same country who deposed Allende and installed Pinochet into Chile, who was a brutal dictator. That too was about resources. Oh and let's not forget Iran, who had their democratically elected government deposed to install yet another brutal dicator, the Shah, in 1953, again for oil. Or the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. The list goes on. This happens so much there's a Wikipedia page on it [2].
So, for anyone who celebates this (and I mean this generally, not at the commenter I'm responding to), you will see no benefit for this. A few billionaires will get richer, probably. The US was probably pour countless billions into supporting some puppet, probably Machado but we'll see. And I would be surprised if the lives of Venezuelans gets any better.
And if the lives of Venezuelans does actually get better, it's probably by lifting sanctions and you should be asking why we were starving them in the first place.
As a reminder, the US knows the effects of sanctions. When confronted by a report on sanctions killing 500,000 Iraqi children in 1996, then UN Ambassador and later Secretary of State responded [3]:
> “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima,” asked Stahl, “And, you know, is the price worth it?”
> “I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I2AdbLDVb0Q
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/25/lets-remember-m...
Perhaps people forget that countries are sovereign and can do whatever they want. The "global order" has always been based on strength: the stronger do what they want and the weaker do what they can.
What the US have just done is not something new because of Trump.
We are told about "international law" and "norms" so much that we perhaps forget that this is mostly BS.
Forget Venezuela, this is a major problem for America. Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth lied to Congress a couple weeks ago when they explicitly said that this is not about regime change. Entering an illegal war, committing acts of international piracy, and pledging to take over another country’s resources is completely illegal and a violation of American laws as well as international laws.
And right now, the entire right wing is cheering on this situation. These are people who wanted an isolationist America that does not start new conflicts. Spineless Republican senators and legislators are staying quiet as they allow this horrific dictatorial action to go on without any criticism. And meanwhile, tech billionaires like Elon Musk are continuously tweeting sycophantic support for this illegal act of state terrorism.
How will America recover? Its political system is broken. And its international reputation is shattered.
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> The president should not have the power to apprehend a countries president IN THEIR COUNTRY without a process thats more than just "I really want it".
"I really want it" is not the reason. Come on! Maduro is indicted in the Southern District of New York. Both charged with conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism and import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the US.
The military operation was merely to lead the operation to allow FBI to arrest. Now, the oil issue certainly can be argued as the real reason for the strike and capture, but frankly they were OUR oil fields (funded by US companies) before Maduro seized them and nationalized them.
Thank you for articulating this outside of the regular "HN myopia" lenses.
This event will also serve as a measure of how strong China actually is. Venezuela is very important strategically for them, they can't let it slide unless they're weak.
Surely, they won't go as far as direct US confrontation, but if they don't make Venezuela into a death trap for any US soldier being stationed there, one can draw the conclusion that China isn't as strong as many make them (including me, I confess).
But it wouldn't be that surprising if Venezuela turns out being a death trap for any US soldier being stationed there...
we should not dilute the effect of what's been by saying Maduro was not good for Venezuela.
> The president should not have the power to apprehend a countries president IN THEIR COUNTRY
Good thing then that Maduro isn't the president of Venezuela, but a narco-terrorist usurper.
EDIT: Downvoting me will not change that fact, only hide it.
You’re not wrong about the motives, but others are:
The U.S. has all the oil it needs right now.
The message from the U.S. to the world is: don’t nationalize our businesses infrastructure and then use it against our interests (even if they are on your sovereign territory) - we do not forgive and we do not forget.
So the US did the right thing for the wrong reasons and therefore it is bad? (not that I even agree with your premise).
Also I presume that it is not OK for the US to have its say on who stays in power in Venezuela, but it's OK for Cuba or Russia to do so?
"We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition"
And then a few seconds later: "US oil companies will go into Venezuela"
Never the US has been so honest around so many lies in the same speech.
I am still curious about the whole side bar about Washington being now safest and free of crime.