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Comment by random9749832 | Hacker News Reader

You are still young so you don't seem to get it yet but history has shown that killing or capturing the leader of a country with outside actors rarely leads to anything good. It usually just leads to more instability.

Pop-culture shows you that if you get rid off Mojo Jojo you suddenly get rainbows and flowers but reality doesn't work that way very often and it is just propaganda.

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Colombian here. Maduro wasn't the leader of a country; he lost the elections and became a cruel dictator. He led a regime that murdered, tortured, and disappeared thousands of people, turning Venezuela into a narco-state run by the ELN and other paramilitary groups. It may not have worked in other areas, but the US intervention in Panama, which resulted in the capture of another dictator, Noriega, transformed Panama into the fastest-growing economy in Latin America (6% average annual growth). Poverty fell by 60%, and today it's a very prosperous country. I can assure that there will be massive celebrations today by all our Venezuelan brothers and sisters living in Latin America.

Edit: I just discovered that Noriega was also captured on January 3rd.

Well it didn't take long for Trump to announce he now runs Venezuela to plant US companies to export oil to the US. Once you understand American foreign policy it is just predictable.

> Maduro wasn't the leader of a country

Maduro was the leader of the country. Leadership is a practical matter, it doesn't depend on elections or democracy. Stalin wasn't elected either, and nobody says "he wasn't the leader of the USSR".

Likewise, there are leaders of countries who weren't elected that are currently aligned with the US, and nobody claims those leaders aren't the leaders.

A dictator or a king aren't elected, but sometimes they are leaders nonetheless. They are leaders if they de facto lead their countries/kingdoms. If insurgents wrestle control, they cease being leaders.

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