Can anyone give an overview of what has happened in Venezuela since Maduro took over and what the beef is between him and Trump? Looks like US going to start exporting Freedom again..
This is one scenario where it might actually have a positive outcome. Maduro looks to have barely won his reelection in 2018. The 2024 election he lost, badly. All the individual precinct results had him at 30-40%. Conveniently, the central election database was "hacked" and they lost all the final numbers. But not to worry, Maduro definitely won!
Was the CIA/USAID involved? Almost certainly, and in 2018 it was barely hidden. The U.S. has been meddling in Venezuela long before Chavez came to power, and has not helped the situation in any way.
Even given all that, the Venezuelan people want Maduro gone. The help of the U.S. to remove the regime might actually have a positive end. This isn't like other countries where the U.S. foisted democracy upon a population that had never experienced it. Venezuela has been imploding, for years. Nearly 8 million people have left in the last decade. The diaspora represents nearly 1/4 of all Venezuelans.
LOL - this is how they always do it
> the Venezuelan people want Maduro gone. The help of the U.S. ...
They don't want us to invade their country, shoot their family and neighbors, bomb their cities .... Imagine how you would feel to have a foreign military on your streets, with guns, tanks, etc. Remember that Venezualan soldiers are family of other Venezualans.
When the US military has 'helped', it hasn't turned out well for civilians. Conservatively, 100,000 died in Iraq. Militaries aren't for helping; they are for destroying things and killing people and only appropriate for self-defense.
Most wars since WWII have ended badly for the US: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan ... Korea ended in stalemate. Wars are political actions - enacted through violence - and only end with political outcomes. What is the peaceful political outcome in Venezuala?
>Polls show that the Panamanian people overwhelmingly supported the invasion. According to a CBS News poll, 92% of Panamanian adults supported the invasion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...
guess it depends a bit if you can shift the dictator without killing too many people.
I guess the peaceful political option would be kick out Maduro, put Edmundo González Urrutia in power (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/19/venezuelan-pre...)
Apparently Urrutia got about 2/3 of the votes in the 2024 election but Maduro claimed victory and wouldn't go.
The US has offered $50m for information leading to Maduros arrest and the Miami Herald said a 'source' said "there is now more than one general willing to capture and hand him over" so maybe the US is hoping that kind of thing will happen?
In the cited Wikipedia article, most of the descriptions of Panamanian reactions are negative. It also says CBS polled 158 people ... and that 20,000 people were displaced, etc. I don't put much stock in Wikipedia; my point is that citing only that poll seems like cherry-picking.
People don't like armed soldiers threatening them, especially from other countries, especially killing their own people.
> without killing too many people
Killing a few people is fine, then - how many? Might makes right.
Maduro is the wrong kind of South American dictator, i.e. one that doesn't bend the knee to American interests. Trump threatening to overthrow him and put a nationalist puppet that will sell out to America is not unusual for a US president.
To be clear, I am not defending Maduro. Everyone sucks here, but let's not be fooled, this will not improve Venezuelans lives. Just look at what happened to Chile and the others.
Venezuela became more authoritarian and poorer. The oil industry collapsed because of mismanagement and the production of drugs rose. Venezuelans fled to Colombia, Brazil, the U.S., everywhere. The usual stuff for 3rd World dictatorships.
> what the beef is between him and Trump?
The same beef Trump has with everyone that he can blame for anything. Trump just wants a scapegoat for his own incompetence, to blame someone else. He thrives on confrontation. That's why he sends troops to Chicago and L.A. and battleships to the Caribean.
This is about empire and oil.
Venezuela could be an identical country in every respect and if Maduro was a puppet of the United States sitting on the world's largest oil reserves instead of an opponent the New York Times would be writing stories about how they're reforming and improving.
Not saying it justifies Trump’s action in the slightest. Just a point of order.
The first US backed coup dedicated to overthrowing that pretty clear cut democratic decision came in 2003.
That woman who won the nobel prize recently also supported it, so...democracy clearly isnt her thing either.
I mean, this time round: the man is unequivocally not good. No one thinks Maduro's regime is legitimate — there's pretty broad consensus in North and South America. Internationally he has less support than Hugo Chavez had, because he has no legitimacy at home.
But the reality is still the same: old-fashioned interests in the USA want much more control over what happens in Venezuela, what Venezuela sells to and to whom.
Trump, spurned for admiration and a Nobel peace prize, wants a war presidency now, because that's an easier source of narcissistic supply.
(And also as he has mused in the past, perhaps a source of "wartime powers", which may most simply explain why he's renamed the DoD to the Department of War: it's all part of the narrative he is building for himself and his supporters.)
He knows nobody is going to have a credible argument that Maduro is legitimate but we're back in the second gulf war territory: the "why now" of it.
He is picking a fight and waiting for them to lash out.