Nor is "US carries out murder campaign in Latin American country for unclear reasons"
> The president became aware of the consultations and warned his wife to be careful because it might look odd if it came out, Nancy Reagan wrote in her book.
> Nancy Reagan began consulting Quigley after the 1981 assassination attempt on her husband. She wanted to keep him from getting shot again, Nancy Reagan wrote in her 1989 memoir, "My Turn." "If it makes you feel better, go ahead and do it," she quoted the president as saying.
> The consultations were revealed to great embarrassment for the White House in a 1988 book by former White House chief of staff Donald Regan, who blamed the first lady for his ouster a year earlier. Regan said almost every major move and decision the Reagans made during his time as chief of staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes. He did not know her identity.
> The woman was in fact Joan Quigley, an heiress and Republican political activist. Quigley told The Associated Press in 1988 after her identity was revealed that she was a "serious, scientific astrologer."
A "serious, scientific astrologer", but no such thing exists, does she understand formulating null hypothesis and hypothesis testing statistics? probably not, so not scientific, any scientist actually applying the scientific method to astrology will quickly distance herself from astrology at all.
Of course he now denies this so that never happened, he also said that 'doing so would not have been wrong'. Ever the lawyer. My client didn't do it, and if he did it wasn't wrong.
Nor did he ever claim that 'God influenced his deliberations'...
If God does exist, then what's the problem exactly?
I suppose all of this assumes that God is infallible, but I imagine God has more information and processing power than the President.
I am not suggesting a theocracy. I doubt God is whispering in anyone's ear today, and humans can still make bad decisions and claim it was God's will. Just a thought exercise.
> humans can still make bad decisions and claim it was God's will.
god could still be infallible at achieving his goals but they still arent the right goals.
> "If it makes you feel better, go ahead and do it," she quoted the president as saying.
Also
> Both the president and Nancy Reagan denied that any policies or decisions were based on astrology.
So we can't really tell to what extent, if any, those consultations affected the actual policies.
In general, I don't trust politicians by default. Still, I also don't trust astrologers (and even less so), so there is no reason for me to believe the astrologer more than the president.
Uh? Bush failed to assemble a coalition by providing dubious and faked proofs of supposed WMDs and chemical weapons. The Europeans and especially the French didn't fall for it. The only one who did was Tony Blair and he's still paying the price both domestically in the UK and abroad. AFAIK, Trump isn't planning to send troops in Venezuela on the scale Bush did in Iraq.
(edit: I was wrong. Italy, UK, Spain, Poland, Turkey among others.) Anyway, the point is that there was some sort of coalition.
And for months, years even, that "can't argue with success" strategy worked great. Some help from a loyal press was necessary, of course.
This is what the architects of this invasion (it's hardly Trump alone) are banking on, too. We WILL get told that suddenly life is so much better for everyone in Venezuela, and for a while it might even be true - it's very cheap for the US to provide, after all. The serious, realistic position will be that this was a shrewd thing to do, and the Nobel Peace prize committee showed great foresight and were vindicated in their choice.
But then the Furies will come knocking.
"You forgot Poland."
Can you outline how Canada contributed? Because I distinctly remember our PM at the time, Chretien, saying 'no thanks'.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Iraq_War
How about Germany?
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/06/iraq.johnhoope...
He should be tried for war crimes for dragging the UK into a war on false pretences.
Blair was accused of misleading parliament over the WMD claims and there was a limited attempt to impeach him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_motion_to_impeac...
Also relevant with regard to war crimes is this recent uncovering: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/30/tony-blair-p...
(There's lots of various opinions given about Blair which are not really authoritative, such as: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair-iraq-gov...)
So this was purely a political move on the part of Blair to cozy up to the US. Maddening.
I wish that were true, but as somebody from Denmark I can tell you that it isn't
Upon reflection, the justifications to invade Afghanistan were every bit as flimsy as the justification to invade Iraq.
What Iraq had to with it, i honestly have no idea. Somehow we pivotted from Afghanistan to Iraq
The right move by the US would have been to kill osama the way they ultimately did, through intelligence gathering and a targeted strike.
That seems like a solid casus belli.
"KERRY: ...when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better.
LEHRER: Thirty seconds, Mr. President
BUSH: Well, actually, he forgot Poland. And now there's 30 nations involved, standing side by side with our American troops."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/politics/venezuela-uni...
U.S. foreign policy is bipartisan. The big plan was to keep the Russians tied up in Ukraine, get Syria (achieved under Biden) and now get China and Russia out of Venezuela.
It could work with bribing officers like in Syria, in which case there will be minimal resistance and then probably the Nobel War Prize recipient Machado will be installed.
It is possible that all of this was discussed with Russia (you get things in your backyard, we in ours).
Trump commuted the sentence of a fentanyl trafficker and his crime is their whole justification.
There is the Dixie Mafia and the President all over again
Then you put your thumb on the scale (i.e. Texas) so you don’t cede power to the other party in the midterms and then you never need to worry about consequences for your entire term.
It’s a bit more of a problem in 2028 but Trump is term-limited so that’s someone else’s problem.
There's a pretty well established Turkic solution to that. (Change the constitution. Claim the term limit applied to the old republic and it's your first term actually and go about your day)
The people would be knowingly voting for that, and he would have to win the election of course.
After a review of the amendment, I don't believe it would be a "narrow interpretation" to read the text of the law and apply it.
Are you saying it wouldn't be okay for him to be VP and take the helm if Vance died? I think that would be okay, per my reading.
The deception/switcharoo is a different problem, not really related to running three times. Biden could have made Kamala President Day 1 as well.
No one has ever expected a former President to want to become a VP — a lower office.
I don't really think you're that clever, no offense. Other humans can think of "what ifs" just the same as you.
There's probably a historical record of how they arrived at the language, if you care about that kind of thing.
Vance has been willing to ride along with Trump as long as it gets Vance to positions of higher power. But it seems to me that Vance's agenda is Vance, not Trump. I doubt that he'd play that "resign" game. (He might tell Trump that he was going to...)
Snatching a national leader of a country with which the US is not at war, has had zero force authorization, off of that leader's own soil, is completely unprecedented, no matter how bad that leader is.
Wars should not be the unilateral whim of an uncountable dictator, ever. They should not be started by the US on pretenses that continually change, have not been clearly stated to the American people or Congress, and that make zero sense to anyone involved.
The most clear explanation I have heard that makes any sense at all for this behavior is that Marco Rubio thinks he can ride this to the presidency because he knows it will be popular with a large chunk of Latin Americans, even if it is inexplicable to most Americans.
Regardless of the logistics of how wars should be conducted, the destruction of the US constitution inherent in this action is treasonous to our country's ideals.
it is, for better or worse, precedented
Folks there's nothing new or insane here. Countries attacked other countries all throughout human history. The surprise is when they don't.
Now it's not super hard to understand why Trump is fixated on Venezuela in terms of geopolitics. There's a decision by this admin to bolster US in the western hemisphere, possibly in preparation to coming to terms with a bipolar world split between US and China. So the US is now meddling with Canada and Greenland. Now with the shift towards the right in Latam (Milei in Argentina, Bukele in El Salvador, Kast in Chile) Trump is just pushing a few more bricks to create a more uniform American-led sphere. Plus, Venezuela was very close with the Iranians and Russians, so removing this regime surely serves some strategic goals.
"Justified" in the sense of "went to congress for a declaration of war". You know, that thing Presidents stopped doing in the early 2000s.
Examples of bombings/ground invasions using WPR without congressional AUMF:
Invasion of Grenada (1983) (7,300 US troops, 19 KIA)
Invasion of Panama (1989) (27,000 troops, 23 KIA)
Airstrikes on Libya (1986) (and 2011) [Obama administration argued they did not need Congressional authorization because the operations did not constitute "hostilities" as defined by the War Powers Resolution. Therefore, they argued, the 60-day clock never started.]
Kosovo Air Campaign (1999) [The bombing campaign lasted 78 days in violation of the 60-day limit]
The Mayaguez Incident (1975)
Syria Missile Strikes (2017 & 2018)
Assassination of Qasem Soleimani (2020)
For example I'm not american and mostly on the right, and I think it's doubtful if it's legally justified (how does one legally justify a was anyways? it's extra-judicial almost by definition), but it makes a lot of sense, it aligns with realpolitik and it's morally good for several independent reasons. In particular it has a hugely disproportionate geopolitical impact, and less importantly it can bring a few million people from under a dictatorship.
As an interesting aside, I recently did a quick research on the Grenada invasion, widely spoken of as an embarrassing moment. It went... very well. They came, remove a budding dictatorship right after a coup, left in two months, and Grenada had no ill effects in the years after (both by subjective reporting, and by GDP per capita comparable to neighboring countries). The alternative would have been "do nothing", skip the reputational hit and have yet another hellhole in the region. The number of dictatorships that did well in recent history is exactly two, and neither was socialist (SK and Singapore).
What? There's a process for initiating an offensive war in the US and they didn't follow it. Legally, Congress must authorize it. Though that hasn't been followed for quite a few wars now.
Seems on “Illegal” side of things, for whatever that matters in ‘26 huh?
But we did have an AUMF for the absolute disasters that were the afghanistan and iraq wars. Somebody who isn't american coming in and saying "whatever, fuck it, Trump just does what he wants" is terrifying to me.
Trump would prefer it if I were killed. Should I be shot?
Just because it's ignored every time doesn't make this time okay.
This. Your logic could at least make sense with other US president, but not wanna-be dictator one doing lip service for all the authoritarians and dictators in the world. Not a good fit to fight for democracy.
It’s more than lip service.
I see we’re now living in a world where many people genuinely don’t even remember the answer to this question.
Roughly, you can legally justify a war if (i) it’s in self defense or (ii) you get a UN Security Council resolution. That’s why GWB tried to get a security council resolution before going into Iraq, as the case for self defense was pretty shaky.
Is it common for actual wars to meet these legal requirements? No. But that’s just because wars are something that generally shouldn’t happen. It’s also not common for murders to meet the requirements on justifiable homicide.
Some of the discussion of the legality of the US invasion of Panama is relevant here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...
Ah a textbook case of outgroup homogeneity bias. [1] Your follow up comment about Bernie and AOC is icing on the cake.
https://www.state.gov/nicolas-maduro-moros/
[edit] Maduro remained under US federal indictment on narco‑terrorism and related cocaine trafficking conspiracy charges throughout the Biden administration.
Russia in the last 30 years invaded and occupied Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria - not to mention the atrocities committed in Africa.
But with the exception of Syria, Russia always had genocidal intent - deny cultures, erase them, and make those countries as unstable as possible while remaining occupied.
I'm not saying what the US did was good, or right, but there's a big difference.
The US never denied the existence of cultures, languages, etc.
You seriously need to open up just one (1) history book about how the US was founded, to understand how wrong you are on just this point.
Because if you want to "win" arguments by randomly swinging hundreds of years to make a point, then it's pointless, because anyone can pick a point in thousands of years of History to show "look - they were bad here".
I think discussions about modern history are sufficient for the post-WW2 period, as there was a global consensus on international law and the Charter of the UN.
If you hold grievances about events hundreds of years old to make points about current events, then it's pointless.
I don't think they're the same, so many institutions were established that over the years that I don't see them as the former colony of the British crown.
But hey, if you want to discuss semantics, go for it.
What about segregation then, is that recent enough for you? Or that wasn't about culture/language, so that too isn't applicable? I'm afraid that with rose-tinted glasses, everything has an explanation why your favorite is different than their favorite.
It's the biggest geopolitical event in modern History to prevent the death of millions, by attempting to stop the expansion of borders through military force and making countries recognize the borders of each of its members.
> What about segregation then, is that recent enough for you?
What about segregation? Where? In different European countries? USA? South Africa? India?
Was there a global consensus to end segregation? Or were different events at different points in time, achieved in different manners? Is there still segregation happening in some societies?
So they invaded their own internationally recognized territory. Wonderful. By that standard Ukraine invaded Donbass after they declared themselves independent of Ukraine.
>Syria
Even more outlandish claim, considering they were invited by the government. Whether the west considered the government illegitimate or not didn't matter.
>Moldova >Georgia
in both conflicts in protection of a minority, on whose territory a larger state laid claim using Soviet drawn borders and dissolution of the USSR. Since the Ukrainian conflict started I observed lots of enthusiasm for Soviet borders on the side of Russia's detractors, which were often drawn with territories assigned as a form of favoritism, simply because communist leadership in Moscow had better a relationship with the communist leaders of one of the ethnicities in question. That way historic Armenian land of Artsakh was assigned to Azerbaijan for example -- the recent ethnic cleansing outcome of that is well known.
If the US tried to survive by just fair economics it would crumble into dust in less than a decade. Yet they use Latin America as their own backyard in order to avoid this.
And, well, as an European I have to say that France does the same with Africa in order to be semi on par with Germany. If not, their GDP would just be slightly better than Spain, if not worse because centralisation it's hell for modern times.
Some states in the US would do fine, OFC. But in order to support the whole USA, that's unfeasible. You can't have a country where a few powerhouses have to carry up the rest in a really innefective way, such as oil dependant transportation.
Meanwhile, the Chinese and Europe will just build non-polluting railways everywhere.
Thanks for explaining why Russia is less unreasonable than the US.
You're basically saying that one countries interpretation of events is enough to annex another. That's the old logic of pre WW2 lol
Especially Russia that has revised their history so many times they even have a saying that "Russia's past is uncertain".
So to have that interpretation of what I said shows that you have a very poor understanding of History and current events, or it's just a deficient provocation.
For example, the Israeli occupation and progressive annexation of Palestine is especially criminal because they have no intention of including the native population in their ethno-state- it's an annexation with ethnic cleansing or, if needed, genocide.
How is that relevant to Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Whenever Russia takes territory they're filling mass graves with raped Ukrainian civilians.
American forces too have committed innumerable atrocities, and there is no forgiving that, but it doesn't support the premise above that Russia is in some way cleaner.
Frankly that's just propaganda.
Putin himself has famously claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are the same people: this is the very opposite of the ideological premise to justify a genocide.
Russian imperialism needs Ukraine, since without Ukraine there's no Russian empire. Russia invaded Ukraine out of imperialist delusion, not for humanitarian reasons.
You have thoroughly bought into Russian propagandist lies.
Indeed, but Hitler is not famous for mass-murdering the Sudetendeutsche.
And I never claimed that Russia invaded Ukraine for humanitarian reasons. I think it did because it could not tolerate a Ukraine fully integrated in the West and NATO- but this just means exercising political control over Ukraine, it doesn't imply an ethnic cleansing or genocide of Ukrainians.
It's pretty bad, but sure, if you just go along with it you'll probably be fine.
Genocide is an attempt to kill a group; That does not happen only by murdering people - it's also forced assimilation. In this case, Russia is directly violating article 2) e) of the Genocide Convention*: "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
>citizenship
Citizenship is not relevant to the genocide convention at all.
This is soviet bullshit, the Moscowitz did a lot of genocides you can find plenty of sources, so they were and are as bad as Israel because the Rusky/slavs in Ruzzia are indoctrinated to feel superior to the other non slaves in the empire and feel still a bit more superior then the rest of the slavs. You can look at the existing recent data from the Ruzzian stats and how the minorities are more in decline then the Ruskies.
So for uninformed people that might read this soviet guy comment, read a wikipedia summary of what moscowites did and Putin is still doing, I suggest not reading in detail, like reading books or interviews with vitims of this criminal empire you will fill a big amount of pain if you have empath on how this Ruscists treated humans , I will never forget the stuff Ir ead and better if I did not know the details.
Ruzzia, israle , USA all are bad but the situation is multidimensional and is not easy to say that Ruzzia is less bad then Nazis and are better then Israle etc., we cana dmit that criminal are criminals, dictators are dictators, bastardads are bastards and trolls are trolls.
In the last 100 years the trend has been been for America to invade a country and try to install a friendly government rather than formally annex them - Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria.
Oh plus all the overseas military bases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea...
Also US never technically invaded Lybia, Yemen or Syria (unless you count their intervention to support the Kurdish and Iraqi governments against ISIS an invasion...)
What happened in Korea was the opposite of the invasion (of course the South Korea regime they were saving was extremely oppressive and arguably not worse at all than the one in the North at the time).
Also are you implying that the majority of military bases US has in other countries (especially in Europe) is involuntary?
Whataboutism
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities...
But south America is easily blockaded in times of war the oil (if we needed it) would be ours regardless. Second, we don't need it, we've been a net exporter for like over a decade now right?
Its been a few days. It turns out this was a simply capricious and erratic act on the part of Donald Trump, and we stand to essentially benefit not one iota as a country from it!
Which boys?
Besides, how realistic is a fear that a law abiding citizen would be endangered by the ICE?
[1] https://nipnlg.org/news/press-releases/ice-deports-man-claim...
Supposedly there's been 500k deportations, and 2.5m "self-deportations" in 2025, so what would be high here?
Edit: I also googled that man's name. A quick read of nbcs article suggests it's not clear he's a citizen. The judge said he "had a substantial claim to citizenship," which means nothing either way. He was born in Thailand.
"In his Nov. 3 brief, [a lawyer] contends Souvannarath stayed in the United States for 19 years after his removal order without challenging it or seeking proof of citizenship."
I love how you get to use unconfirmed bullshit numbers in your argument but then demand an exact count for the opposition to mix with your nonsense.
The official DHS statistics quote over 605k deported: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/12/10/thanks-president-trump-a...
The guardian says 327,000 a few weeks ago: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/22/ice-detentio...
You do the math
3/600,000 removals in 2025 = .000005% chance
So, to answer his question: not realistic at all that you'll get deported as a citizen. That's without fact checking you. I haven't seen anything about actual citizens being removed, including in the sibling comment claiming it with a reference.
Perhaps you are having trouble following the conversation. The argument put forth by OP is that ICE is endangering american citizens. That is factually true.
https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...
I'm way more concerned with regular law enforcement endangering American citizens than ICE.
My concern covers all LEO fucking with American citizens, especially the masked and unidentified ones.
Between .0005% and .0003% chance that if ICE grabs someone up, they're a citizen. I think that's a pretty good record, actually. I don't think it's very alarming.
We have 348 million citizens, 170 got held for...days! While we conducted the most effective deportation of illegals in history.
I'm pretty sure ICE isn't going to accidentally get me. This problem may as well be non-existent.
What's real is actual citizens wrapped up in actual bullshit with regular LEO. With probably several orders of magnitude difference, wouldn't you agree? Maybe thousands per day, instead of 170 per year? Costing folks more than a few days' detention.
Why do you figure they're wearing masks?
If you mean they're deporting illegals without them seeing a judge, I'd be in favor of that.
Why does a 0% chance of a citizen being deported alarm you?
Any attempt at holding the admin accountable would make it look a bit more like Venezuela. NA is rightfully too soft to want to ever go that route. They'll peacefully protest and that'll be it. Anything more than that would be the individuals throwing their lives away unless the whole country did it in unison.
But the dice Trump rolled could have easily fell onto a well prepared Maduro regime, which could have downed a few Blackhawks, torpedoed the ship from which they launched, captured and killed a few dozens to a few hundreds US service men, paraded them in the streets of Caracas and used them as human shields protecting the main military targets etc.
I.e, Trump could have easily committed US to a long term war and a ground invasion, without Congress authorization or allied support, and with Iraq or worse long term results.
It's actually quite an impressive feat of negotiation.
The concept of "international law" here is pretty confusing because to begin with you'd need to choose who decides what counts as a violation of Venezuelas sovereignty. Presumably the people backed by the US are okay with this, and team Maduro isn't.
Presumably, if you were to agree that Maduro wasn't in fact the legitimate leader of Venezuela, you'd just consider this an internal issue with US helping in local law enforcement matters.
If you disagree and consider Maduro to be the legitimate president, presumably no amount of justification will help you see it differently. But then, I'm not sure anyone particularly cares about your opinion either.
They're talking about Venuzela stealing their oil (it's not) and of transporting drugs to the US (while pardoning drug king pins).
The reality is that there a lot of people across the political divide at very high levels of government who deeply dislike Maduro for a variety of reasons, some perhaps more pure-hearted than others.
Oil and drugs are obviously not even how they're justifying this to themselves. The oil in Venezuela isn't that interesting because it's really only US and some Canadian oil companies that are capable of extracting it. The US is always going to control oil production in Venezuela, no matter what.
But yeah, instead of focusing on all the silly statements the admin puts out you might as well just guess at the eventual steelmanned argument they'll present in writing at a later date.
> Also, shouldn't he then be doing this in many other places in the world?
No, I don't see how that would follow. I can choose to give money to a charity, but that does not mean I have to choose to give my money to all the charities in the world.
Were they? And is that the justification the US has cited? If not, you're writing fan fiction and that's not really interesting.
I'm not a supporter of totalitarian regimes including Maduro's, but the US has a track record of producing very poor outcomes for people in South America when they topple one leader in favor of a more--shall we say--"market friendly" character waiting in the wings.
As for international law, it is extremely clear, prohibiting the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. International law recognizes only two clear exceptions: self defense or a US Security Councul resolution.
This is all necessarily speculative, we might never have sufficient visibility to know all the facts.
I'm merely attempting to provide the strongest reply the administration could provide if they cared to try. I believe it's reasonably grounded in facts.
1. US government openly does not recognize Maduro as the legitimate head of state of Venezuela
2. US government does recognize Edmundo González Urrutia as the president-elect.
3. Venezuelan opposition has been heavily lobbying in an effort to get foreign governments to intervene in Venezuela
All of these things are verifiable facts, I think they can be distilled into my perfectly reasonable suggestion as to how the US could fend off such criticism.
Unilateral action by the US against a souvenir nation should be criticized regardless the nation.
There's no second party to this action, it's the US's alone. Even if we accept the electoral fraud claims, Venezuela did not ask for US intervention. The rightfully elected leader of a nation can't call for a second nation to invade and bomb their nation.
Why not?
For Venezuela, this would be something that, if any organization could call for it, it'd be the "Supreme Tribunal of Justice" [1]
And before you say it, yes I get that they are corrupt. But there are still laws. Which is why if you are going to overrule the laws of another nation, you should have at least some backing from the UN first. Deciding on your own that the the courts are wrong is just international vigilantism.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Tribunal_of_Justice_(V...
On the other hand, if much of the world agrees with you anyway, not bothering with asking the UN might not matter at all.
Decided by whom?
International law, also known as public international law and the law of nations, is the set of rules, norms, legal customs and standards that states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generally do, obey in their mutual relations. In international relations, actors are simply the individuals and collective entities, such as states, international organizations, and non-state groups, which can make behavioral choices, whether lawful or unlawful. Rules are formal, typically written expectations that outline required behavior, while norms are informal, often unwritten guidelines about appropriate behavior that are shaped by custom and social practice.[1] It establishes norms for states across a broad range of domains, including war and diplomacy, economic relations, and human rights.
It's a low bar, and clearly one that the current Venezuelan government clears.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...
Anyway, good riddance. Maybe the Trump Administration actually has a plan for peaceful transfer of power now that they removed Maduro? The US still needs to disrupt ELN drug operations, if that's what they're really after.
It's really really difficult to paint this as inherently bad, it's hard to see how the conclusion here doesn't entirely depend on how you feel about the results of the previous Venezuelan elections.
From the perspective that regime change often goes horribly wrong? Absolutely.
From the point of view that Maduro was effectively in charge of a coup that the real elected candidates were desperately seeking foreign support to stop? Harder to see the intervention as bad, as it is probably the only way to rectify the situation.
There's no doubt that this heavily depends on one's personal views, so there's no obvious answers. At least the concern about regime change is fact-based and pretty much universal, regardless of personal beliefs. The concern about whether or not it's right or wrong for the US to go and arrest Maduro depends largely on how one views the recent Venezuelan election results, and therefore inherently relies on some major assumptions on matters where we're unlikely to ever see conclusive proof.
Of course, there are also pretty good technical reasons to believe the electoral receipts published by the Venezuelan opposition. I believe they would have been pretty much impossible to fake. That topic and others related to it have been pretty much endlessly discussed on HN already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41123155
Again, no it doesn’t. It’s the unilateral extraterritorial interventionism that’s the problem. I have no time for Maduro or his administration.
And if you think this intervention is about protecting democracy I have a bridge to sell you.
>And if you think this intervention is about protecting democracy I have a bridge to sell you.
No, I certainly don't think that. I'd suspect it's mostly about personal grievances and Trumps desire to make a show. But still I think it makes more sense to focus on the best-case justifications than trying to guess at the real reasons behind why this administration does what it does.
The actual motivations matter because they dictate the outcome. In this case the actual motivations have been stated publicly by Trump a few years ago, they want the oil back. They will happily support whoever ends up in power so long as they hand back the oil rights.
>In this case the actual motivations have been stated publicly by Trump a few years ago, they want the oil back. They will happily support whoever ends up in power so long as they hand back the oil rights.
That's obviously not credible, you can't profitably extract Venezuelan crude without US involvement. There's simply nobody else with the capabilities to do so. Venezuelan oil is particularly difficult to get out of the ground, it's tremendously difficult to extract profitably.
I see that you do not manage your finances properly. Lemme take over.
Besides I do not believe this "nobody else" BS. If there is a need and money to be made they will find someone with the tech or deep enough pockets to develop it.
There's no need and there's likely to be no money to be made. The extraction costs will probably be closer to $60 per barrel, which is more than you can sell it for.
Not your or mine problem. It is up to Venezuela to figure it out either way, at least in a reasonable world it should be.
Baloney, you said this:
>"You can't profitably extract Venezuelan crude without US involvement"
Pretty sure given enough efforts could play for others as well.
Not really, given the investment involved in developing the necessary technology in the first place.
Only way this could make sense for any third country would be if it was strategic, but Venezuela is kind of poorly located for that.
Ah, but when it's the US it's fine. They're the champions of democracy, aren't they?
Not at all arguing that it somehow leads to justification for an illegal invasion.
In this specific case the claim comes down to assertions of a sham election. If this was indeed the case (with the lens of an international survey obviously the US view is suspect considering the attack), then the Venezuelan people themselves do not view him as a legitimate leader, which simplifies the situation.
I think my assumption that the legitimacy of a government rests in the eye of the beholder is pretty reasonable.
Step out of your American exceptionalist bubble for a second. How would you like if the inverse were true? There's some shady elections in US so Venezuela decides to throw bombs on Washington. How would you enjoy that?
>Step out of your American exceptionalist bubble for a second. How would you like if the inverse were true? There's some shady elections in US so Venezuela decides to throw bombs on Washington. How would you enjoy that?
I'm neither from the US, nor a huge fan of the US.
I do think Venezuela could probably have been right to depose Trump in a similar manner had he managed to cling to power after January 6, but that's an absurd thing to speculate about.
It actually terrifies me ...
It's like we're missing intellectual depth of moral backbone where it really matters (and no, I don't mean on Twitter).
I don't like how Trump has unilaterly decided this extreme of an action, but at the moment I am glad that this didn't fail like it did in Ukraine. I am still worried about what the aftermath will lead to. I don't think peace and democracy is having a particularly winning record at the moment.
These things are messy.
If we really want to "promote democracy" so badly, let's start with Saudi Arabia.
But if we're going to invade some country on the grounds of making it into a democracy, one does have to wonder why we don't start with the countries that are very proudly and openly not democracies.
But the Russian narrative would be that Viktor Yanukovych was ousted by the Ukraine Parliament in 2014 in what Putin described as a "coup". So Moscow will allege that any president from a future election is illegimate.
Just listened to the Trump press conference, it seems Machado won't be involved in the US-led transition government. He said she is deeply unpopular in Venezuela and it wouldn't work. Conversations are developing between Sec.State Rubio and Venezuela VP Delcy Rodriguez who is Acting President.
This situation feels messier by the minute.