i know, I was being hyperbolic, same point of have <country> arrest Obama while he was in office..

Life is good? Your feeling about the goodness of life depends on if a powerful country captures the leader of another country?

Whatever you think of the morality and ethics of the man, the precedent, the outcome, the extrajudicial action is opening the door for less law and order in the world.

This sets a precedent that the US is back to regime change and world policing, and that went swimmingly in the past as we all know.

>> And what are they going to to do against the militias and military that are loyal to Maduros political party?

> We’ll see about that.

This seems hand-wavy - like you're not aware of any plan for the future and that you're comfortable with that. If I'm mistaken, what specifics have you heard?

> In the meantime I get to see Maduro handcuffed and blindfolded on a US warship heading to NY.

This sounds like great joy to have working to install leadership that won't massively harm VE (for once).

But this joy would also sound ominous in the absence any such work - like you're being distracted while something awful is put in place.

At the least, I'd check out this post with news links - that this US admin has designs on VE's oil facilities.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473348#46478023

Because the US completely botched stabilizing the country despite 10s of thousands of troops on the ground for years. Meanwhile the indigenous insurgency and the previous to the invasion non-existent but subsequently massed foreign Al-Qaeda in Iraq both ensured no meaningful exports could be accomplished.

In Venezuela it's extremely unclear how suddenly creating a giant power vacuum will allow the US to obtain Venezuela's oil.

On one hand, this seems classic from the Trump Admin in that rash actions have been taken with no future plans in place (cf. DOGE), on the other hand this does appear in line with the promise of "no forever wars" (no sustained US ground presence) and if the US does actually end up with the oil, then it will be at a very low cost (in terms of US blood and treasure).

War hasn't been declared.

> The War Powers Resolution of 1973 (often called the War Powers Act) is a U.S. law designed to limit the President's power to commit the U.S. to armed conflict without congressional approval, requiring presidential consultation with Congress before deploying forces and mandating reports within 48 hours, with a 60-day limit for troop deployment without a formal authorization, though presidents have often challenged or sidestepped its provisions.

Whatever innuendo you'd like to apply to Trump's action, Maduro is objectively a nasty despot.