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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

I don't think anyone in the world besides the deranged fanbase wants to see this.

~60% of the 8M people that fled Venezuela are incline to support a military intervention, that number goes down to 40% estimated for those still inside, so about more than half the country want external action to get out of the dictatorship. That percentage is for external action, the percentage that voted against the dictator in the stolen election last year was calculated at 76%; so no, is definitely not just the MAGA fan base that want to see something happen.

Except last few times it went so well for the countries where "intervention" happen.

Also are they in favor to replacing this dictator with another pro-Trump one?

Current US president have a weak spot for every dictator and authoritarian leader in the world: El Salvador, Russia, Hungary, etc.

Might be not the best candidate to deal with dictators...

> Also are they in favor to replacing this dictator with another pro-Trump one?

When your options are being poor, starved to death or dissapeared during the last 25 years, you take any chance for a change

So Maria machado, the recipient of the Nobel peace prize in 2025 is a would be dictator ?

Why do you believe some civil opposition leader will end up im power after foreign military intervention?

Usually people who end up in power are ones best at shooting others invluding shooting civil politicians.

We have some interesting precedents to compare notes with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi

That did not quite go according to plan either. Definitely not a dictatorship but not exactly clean and the end result is not so far off from where they started. Venezuela could easily end up worse than it is today.

A bad situation is not improved by an even worse one. It does speaks volumes to the desperation of Venezuelans that many would rather their own country get invaded if that rids them of Maduro.

So you know better than the poor brown people?

You’d be surprised. Last month on a visit to the U.S., 8/10 Uber drivers I had were Venezuelan. I’m a fluent Spanish speaker so I engaged in this very topic. The vast majority of them wanted Maduro out, and the fastest way to that is through U.S. intervention. They were not opposed to this.

1. This is a bit of a selection bias, since they are in the US, they aren't going to be the ones in the line of fire. It's all upshot for them.

2. Turn back the clock two decades ago, I'm sure plenty of ex-pat Iraqis wanted Saddam out, but half a million dead and a ten-year civil war and also fucking ISIS may have been a bit above what they were willing to pay. If I were living in a country ruled by a deranged autocrat (...), I too would like to see him removed, but that doesn't mean I'd invite war over it. (And the knives-out-nightly-disappearance repression that will inevitably follow.)

3. Given who Trump sucks up to and appoints, I'm sure he'll find his own monster to replace Maduro with. (The US track record with this in the Americas has been incredibly awful, but I've no doubt that he can set a new lowest bar.) He sure as shit won't be putting some lady who won a peace prize in charge.

Yes, I suppose you have successfully provided a counter-argument to my point, and I have to concede it - there are people with more skin in the game than the average MAGA who want to stick their former neighbours' hands in the fire, to check if it is hot.

Political expats and exiles do tend to favor invasions of their countries more than the people who live in them do, and I've not considered their viewpoints in this.

We really need a decent channel to petition other countries, as the US public.

Maybe we could write on a legal pad and hold it up in the rear window as we pass them on the highway.

Or you could make like the French and actually do something about the death and destruction your nation subjects the rest of the planet to.

It's funny how the French are portrayed as cowards in American popular culture, when in reality the French would've gotten the guillotines out already while the Americans... cower.

not even a joke, we're skipping the 4th and celebrating bastille day this year. Ten days apart and the food and drink are just better.

Certainly not the current French, though.

They no longer get the guillotines out, but they still protest like no one else.

Not always about the right issues, but at least they have the spirit

You sure? https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/block-everything-protes...

I think we were talking about the guillotine earlier on

They're metaphoric these days ;)

> It's funny how the French are portrayed as cowards

Are they? Where does that come from?

It used to be I guess a slur, "surrender monkeys," because France surrendered during WWII and there was a Nazi-collaborator government established filled with French politicians.

It's unfair given the reality and importance of the French resistance, but, that's where it comes from.

That one was the brits if I'm not mistaken - Jeremy Clarkson specifically (who I have a lot of affection for - Top Gear was a significant part of my childhood, but he does make an art out of being offensively wrong).

It seems to have originated in The Simpsons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese-eating_surrender_monkey...

María Corina Machado believes this. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025. Attacking Venezuela would still be illegal, but it would achieve her aims.

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