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Corruption means something legitimate is happening that can be corrupted.

Maduro was president of a sovereign country. A bunch of kidnappers and murderers invaded the building he was in in Caracas, murdered everyone in the room, then kidnapped him and his wife.

What's the "mission"? To pop up in some room and slaughter everyone in it, then kidnap his wife and him? In order to help steal the resources, billions of dollars in oil, for already wealthy people?

Same thing happening in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria. Israel with US help slaughtering people to steal their land and resources.

There's no mission except theft and murder. There's no corruption because the entire enterprise is rotten to begin with.

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> Maduro was president of a sovereign country.

It's funny how we accept the importance given to that statement. when he's just some dude who took control of a country and gave himself that title. As if the social construction means anything in this situation.

> and gave himself that title

Declaring yourself president means nothing. I’m the president of planet earth and nothing changes. Similarly he could go by grand pimp and it would be just as meaningful.

Legitimacy comes from all the people backing up his claim to control of the country. Further governments care about legitimacy because it’s way easier to assassinate leaders than win wars and leaders don’t want to be at risk. It’s pure self interest protecting each other.

The idea of sovereignty is a cornerstone of how we organize our global society. This was an overt statement that the US controls South America, and that South America doesn't rule itself. Previously, we were relaying on covert methods for influence.

The relationship with SA has materially changed.

1. The United States is willing to violate South American sovereignty.

2. South America has offered little resistance to this incident.

That's correct that sovereignty is a cornerstone, but since the founding of the UN that doesn't mean you have a blank check to do whatever you want within the sovereignty of a country.

Things like genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, violating other countries sovereignty with no strong justification, development of nuclear weapons, etc.

So there's a bunch of red lines that clearly some countries will step over the sovereignty line, thankfully so!

I'm not saying the US was right about what they did in Venezuela, but clearly Maduro wasn't recognized as the president of Venezuela by venezuelans and many countries.

If you're going to invoke the UN, you should show the UN resolution calling for action in Venezuela.

UN actions or shortcomings are beyond the point that there was a global understanding after WW2 about sovereignty red lines.

Only genocide has a 'duty to prevent and punish'; with UN Security Council approval of course.

Restrictions on building nuclear bombs are defined in the voluntary Non-Proliferation Treaty, and is not applicaple to non-parties (India, Israel, Pakistan, South Sudan).

Every foreign intervention done by US / NATO through-out has backfired, and worsened the problem it tried to solve.

Case in point: CIA covertly arms Afghan Mujahideen fighters to wage war against the Soviet Union by proxy in the 80s - 90s. But David Hasselhoff did a song, so the Soviet Union fell apart, and Afghan fighters pivoted to civil warfare as Taliban.

Sadam Hussein was a rogue US puppet-dictatorship gone wrong. But 'freeing' Iraq from Hussein entailed destroying their entire civilisation. Just the mayhem caused a million deaths through starvation, sectorial violence, collapsed healthcare, terrorists roaming the streets, etc.

We also destroyed Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Libya, Yemen, Guatemala, Chile, etc. (At least for a while)

Somehow they forgot to include when a member of the Security Council is commiting genocide - like what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

The UN has a body that regulates nuclear energy, called IAEA, and they can definitely bring violations to the Security Council.

> Every foreign intervention done by US / NATO through-out has backfired, and worsened the problem it tried to solve.

That's quite a bold claim:

- first by focusing only in the US / NATO, and leaving out interventions of the UN. Why is that?

- would you say that the people in Kosovo are worse than they were before NATO intervention? Or South Korea with the intervention of the UN? Or even Ukraine today with the help of NATO?

- it's funny you blame the CIA for the consequences of the Afghanistan war, yet you don't blame the USSR who invaded Afghanistan in the first place!

It's like for you, the USSR losing the Afghanistan war was a bad thing, and the collapse of the USSR as well, and the CIA was to blame for all of that? What's going on there?

As for Saddam, he shouldn't have invaded Kuwait, let alone the other atrocities.

You seem to have a lot of grievances towards US / NATO, and very little against USSR and Russia "interventions".

Like what they did in Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and the other atrocities in Africa, and Asia with their neo-nazi paramilitary group.

Anyway, I don't defend everything the US / NATO / UN did - but one thing is sure (up until today), none of them expanded their borders and attempted to annex land.

I'm anti-authoritarianism, and consider the UN as the better alternative. Not into some deep conspiracy lol. I'm sorry I confused you.

Regular remainder: NATO acted exactly once, in afghanistant after USA was attacked. NATO as such was not doing "early interventions".

NATO member states are free to pursue interventions, but they then do not get NATO protection.

> The idea of sovereignty is a cornerstone of how we organize our global society.

It is, but it's kind of a thin lie.

How's sovereignty going for ukraine? Hong kong? Chechnya, South ossetia, and abkhazia? Puerto Rico? Western Sahara? Parts of Sudan? Border regions of bhutan? South american fisheries? People trying to set up micronations?

Ukraine is still sovereign nation. And willing to sacrifice a lot to remain one.

My read on the GP comment was that it's intentionally juxtaposing the weight and importance normally given to being president alongside the anarchy that goes along with kidnapping and murder to point out the irony. If you want to believe in things like sovereignty and government, you can't simultaneously say that these governments can kidnap, invade, and murder just because they can. It undermines the very legitimacy of the social contract. After all, it's not much of a contract if it can be broken at will.

I found it hard to figure out which side the GP came down on, but perhaps it's not taking a side and merely pointing out the irony and the death of legitimacy. Maybe there is no such thing as government anymore, and it all comes down to goons with guns.

I had the same interpretation - Maduro was a bad guy, but when the approach taken is akin to the "Wild West," its hard to claim moral superiority - it devolves to different factions of goons with guns stealing from each other and murdering with impunity, "might makes right."

This stands in contrast to the ideals of a society based on laws and rules, where corruption is a notable exception.

We stand on the precipice of abandoning what the world worked so hard for decades to build...

Honest question: Would you feel similarly if the shoe were on the other foot? If we had a hostile presidential takeover and another country, for reasons completely unrelated to that, showed up at the WH and executed this kind of “mission”?

Maduro was a piece of…let’s keep this polite and say “work.” Everyone agrees. Does that mean what the US did was acceptable? There’s a lot of nuance and context being glossed over here.

It’s like with Iran. “Their government was horrible.” Ok, but that’s not why we attacked them. The Trump admin has explicitly said that wasn’t the motivation, but they randomly bring it up whenever they need to shift tactics. It’s a moral appeal supporters use to paper over the political realities and actual motivations.

Edit: toned down the intensity a bit.

In this scenario, is the person in the Oval Office a rapist, child molester, serial fraudster, corruptly manipulating stock markets, steering government money to his children’s own weapons companies, assassinating other world leaders, committing the war crime of declaring no quarter, committing the war crime of threatening to destroy all significant civilian infrastructure in another sovereign nation, committing the war crime of threatening genocide, and threatening the use of nuclear weapons in a preemptive military action?

Don't forget his incontinence, and that whole literal bulldozing of your democratic institutions.

Incontinence can happen to anyone. No need to pick on things that people can’t control. Especially when he has so many legitimate targets to hit.

> Does that mean what the US did was acceptable?

The longer I am alive the more I realize that power is all that matters, and that rules are nice but only for the peons. "Acceptable" in this case means pretty much nothing and is a word that is philosophic in its meaning. You can yell into the clouds that something is unacceptable or unfair and it may be true in some ethical/moral sense, but it matters none. Power will always win out and if someone came to the WH and did the same thing, then there would only be one reason for it -- that there is somebody more powerful than the US and is able to get away with things like this. The masses would scream, cry and maybe some would be happy, but it wouldn't matter whatsoever. Maduro might have been bad (a great excuse for the masses to avoid revolts) but ultimately, the government made a decision to do it and that's that.

I am not a fan of "well what can ya do?" That's not how we got the 40 hour work week or civil rights legislation. That's not how women got the right to vote. You have to fight and fight and fight for a better world. I mean that.

It's literally how you got those things. Without leverage to get them, they would have just been complaints. You ask what you can do, and then you do it.

I meant more in the sarcastic/defeatist sense. A linguistic shrug not to be taken in the literal sense. That's on me though, I should've picked better wording.

I thought that already happened in the US and that's how we ended up with this current mess..?

I dislike Trump with a passion that is very hard to over emphasize. However, he did win the 2016 and 2024 elections. Maduro stole his seat.

2024 is up for debate, last I checked, not that anyone would challenge it.

It's not up for debate. Don't play Trump's games. It legitimizes his nonsense take on 2020.

Trump lost in 2020. Harris lost in 2024. We have all sorts of external influence and nonsense happening in our social/political lives and yes many states are messing with people's ability to actually vote, but when it comes to what happens in the voting booth, US elections are incredibly secure and fraud/ballot tampering is so rare that calling it "rare" doesn't properly emphasize reality.

The vote count was accurate, Trump won, and we are all paying a horrible price for the self-inflicted chaos and regression that has ensued.

>Not that anyone would challenge it

If there were legitimate grounds to question it there is no way we wouldn't see action on it

> Maduro was a piece of…let’s keep this polite and say “work.” Everyone agrees. Does that mean what the US did was acceptable?

Maduro was replaced by his equally unelected second. It is not as if Venezuela became democracy or something. Instead, a bunch of leaders got promotion including the main torturer.

I find it mind boggling that it is called regime change. Regime remained in place.

I know this is tangential to your overall point, but did really they murder everyone in the room? I was under the impression that a few Venezuelan generals kidnapped Maduro themselves, left him at a predetermined point for US forces to pick up, and had their soldiers fire some small arms into the air to make a token show of resistance. There's no way the US would have flown a slow-moving convoy of helicopters into a hostile city unless they knew a priori that Venezuelan air defense missile batteries would be ordered to stand down.

Who knows what's true, but the official US narrative is that they entered his bunker, slaughtered the (mostly Cuban) security guards, and stopped Maduro just before he could hide behind a reinforced door. So the official narrative is indeed that US forces slaughtered a bunch of people and took Maduro.

Whether there was also cooperation from the Venezuelan military, failure to shoot down helicopters, etc, is a different matter.

I agree there was almost certainly some collaboration with some factions in Maduro's military standing down for the mission to go so smoothly, but its pretty well-established that a number of soldiers were killed, with some US soldiers coming back with the wounds to show for it. The entire bodyguard being killed is something the US and Cuba actually agree on!

They killed like 32 Cuban bodyguards.

> There's no way the US would have flown a slow-moving convoy of helicopters into a hostile city

Speaking like a man without access to a discombobulator.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ja0wzMtzw38

I don't think there's any question that he legitimately won his first election. Which is more than we can say for US allies on the Arabian peninsula. When are we going to send the choppers for them?

2029 I would imagine, I mean think of the profits. These datacenters clearly aren't going to pay for themselves.

How much a particular head of state fits into the modern, western conception of liberalism and democracy should have no bearing on the matter; Kidnapping that head of state and putting him on trial in a different country for crimes he is, at best, peripherally involved in is untenable. Especially when the very obvious motivation is self-enrichment rather than bringing any of that liberal democracy to the populace.

The social construct at play is 'International Law' by agreeing on mutually binding agreements. More specifically the 'prohibition against the use of force'. This is slightly different from the 'rules-based international order' often used in the US, which isn't specifically defined and can thus be used for whatever.

Whether Maduro is a baddie or not, taking military action requires buy-in from the UN Security Council. Specifically: nine affirmative votes from the 15-member council, provided that none of the five permanent members (China, France, Russia, UK, US) cast a veto. And it's only allowed to 'maintain or enforce international peace and security'. The charter contrasts this to building

The US should've consider how their war-plans 'maintain or enforce international peace and security' before commencing. Or even fabricate' sexed up Dossiers' on weapons of mass destruction like when the US invaded Iraq.

Self-defence is the only valid excuse for using arms without prior security council approval and acting without a plan for peace and security.

He was the illegitimate president, he stole the last elections. Plenty of evidence of it. Add to that all the human rights crimes they committed (national guard death squads who killed in the thousands on the poorest areas of the country just to name one). This was investigated by the UN, led by Michelle Bachelet (former president of Chile).

But we did not depose his regime, we just stole him. Not like the US could reliably depose a foreign regime anyway, but this shouldn't be accepted as an excuse.

He indeed was an illegitimate ruler, but that is completely unrelated to what we did.

I’m not debating that. But as Venezuelan I’d like to put that in context. Because it’s important as well. For us even if you think it’s weird it is a glimmer of hope. A bit of justice even if the regime is still in power.

I want to reject such complicated feelings because I don't want the mild support of what our Administration did, and the intrinsic violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, but real life is complicated and things are complicated.

I just want better. But we so rarely get that.

Good Luck. Hopefully we are done with our meddling for now.

that being said, if your method of removal is also illegitimate, it doesn't really help the situation

Where do attempts to steal the election land on the spectrum of

|not ok to kidnap - - - - - - - ok to kidnap|?

Ok to kidnap

> Maduro was president of a sovereign country.

Since 2013, Venezuela has been suffering a socioeconomic crisis under Maduro. He stole the last two elections and remained in power even though he had not legitimately won.

Numerous international bodies and human rights organizations have found that Nicolás Maduro and his government committed extensive human rights violations. These violations have been ongoing since at least 2014 as part of a systematic plan to repress dissent. State security forces and allied armed groups (colectivos) have been implicated in thousands of unlawful or politically motivated killings and arbitrary arrests of protesters, opposition leaders, and perceived critics.

Immediately after the latest presidential election, at least 24 people died as a result of the government’s repression of protests against the appointment of Nicolás Maduro. Most of these killings could amount to extrajudicial executions. Two of the victims were children.

While I understand your sentiment, it doesn't justify what happened.

Think back to January 6 - Imagine if every foreign government assumed it was stolen and decided they should take matters into their own hands. Would it help, or hurt America?

You're apply the oppressor–oppressed framework.

Basically Madura and his regime, along with Gaza, West Bank and others are the victims because they're less powerful and therefore above reproach? However US and Israel are currently powerful and therefore they are the only ones worthy of criticism and scorn?

Gaza, for instance, is famously anti kidnapping.

I think it's more a case of allies and enemies.

Second the west likes to take the moral high ground. That involves holding them to a higher standard.

Third, in cases such as Gaza, and the west bank, they don't have stable governments because of actions by Israel. You can't expect them to behave like a nation state in those circumstances, so yes I do expect more of Israel.

Fwiw I'm British, I remember the troubles on Northern Ireland. I don't condone what the IRA did, but I would still expect my govt to behave better, even though I agree with them.

> Third, in cases such as Gaza, and the west bank, they don't have stable governments because of actions by Israel. You can't expect them to behave like a nation state in those circumstances, so yes I do expect more of Israel.

Exactly. They are oppressed so are incapable of wrong. You can't expect them to not kidnap and murder people at a concert.

Exactly my point

I didn't say they are incapable of wrong. I'm saying you can't hold a group that doesn't have law and order, and therefore control to the same standard as a group that does have control.

If protesters throw rocks at police, would you hold the entire group responsible? Even though most were there to protest peacefully? Would you take the same view if it was the police throwing rocks?

It's a pretty low standard. But even worse it denies them autonomy and control of their own actions. They're victims, mere observers. You deny that group self determination, you do not view them as equals. It's like I get upset if my child bites someone, but not if my cat bites someone, because it's a cat. That's why that oppressor / oppressed mentality is so dehumanizing to the people it purports to empathize with

Why is it dehumanising? I'm not talking on the level of humans, I'm talking on the level of nation states.

Plus I'm not even saying it's oppressor and oppressed, it's that one group has organisation and one doesn't.

I go back to my police and protestor example? Do you apply the same rules to each? Do you think the leader of the police is more or less culpable than the leader of the protestors?

It isn't dehumanising the protestors. If anything it's the opposite, it's dehumanising the police, they are supposed not to have agency. And that's the point.

Seems pretty organized that an open air prison that has severe restrictions on travel and trade can plan something like Oct 7.

Yeah to say say protestor can't control himself from throwing rocks is pretty offensive to the protestor. Put another way, if my son was at a protest and started throwing rocks at police I wouldn't excuse that behavior like he had no choice. You always have a choice.

I'm not saying the protestor can't control himself. I'm saying the organisers of the protest has less control over that individuals actions so has less culpability.

Whereas the police should have a culture of not throwing rocks, so serious questions should be asked of the leadership.

If you have a failed state such that large areas aren't under government control. And some warlord attacked your country, would you say that was a declaration of war from that entire country? Or would you accept the government didn't have control?

Gaza is a messed up place. You wouldn't necessarily expect all the groups to hold to a cease fire, like you would a nation with a single unified command structure.

A breach of a cease fire by Gaza says something different than a breach of a cease fire by Israel.

I'm not saying anything about individuals, I'm saying different group structures have different amounts of control over individuals in that group, so it isn't reasonable to hold them to the same standard.

To go back to your last example. Should you be held responsible for your son throwing rocks? Should that not depend upon the level of control? Or should we treat a dad handing his 5 year old a rock and instructing him to throw the rock at the police, differently to the 25 year old son that went there by him self?

I get this sentiment, but I'll just make the classic "two wrongs don't make a right" rebuttal.

Problem is that only one kind of wrongs being chased. It is systemic and erodes trust

So it's ok for a cop to demand payment from random people because his bosses are corrupt?

If the entire enterprise is rotten, it's because it is corrupted. Unless you're an anarchist you have to accept that a democratic nation state is a legitimate enterprise that is corruptable. I don't think you can say some sub level enterprise X layers down isn't corrupt because the levels above are corrupting that legitimate core.

These people only care about American lives, and fake to care when China or any other country they don't like attack anybody.

Well, it was disputed if he really was a legitimate president, but now it is clear, that the US government does not care about that either.

This is problematic on every account.

Primarily - the issue at hand is the legality of 'insider information' with in institutions.

But the bigger issue is how shameful it is that people can't see the absolute horror beyond their little local ideologies or political beliefs.

Maduro is one of the worst tyrants in the world, responsible for murder and imprisonment of any number of innocents and political dissidents, and the direct cause of millions of people displaced.

Venezuela is truly a horrible place, the country has fallen apart, Chavizmo has no popular legitimacy, he lost the election and remained in power.

It's impossible to speak of 'sovereignty' in that context.

What happened to Maduro was a 'net positive' - it was in fact, a crude form of 'net justice'.

It has nothing to do with Gaze, Syria, Iran etc..

And it has little to do with the cronyism of the Trump regime.

It's fair to question legality of actions, but the fact that people could see Maduro is anything but a criminal in the most common sense, is beyond pale. That's the real issue here actually, the inability for people to contextualize complex issues especially in light of basic moral concerns.

The violence against all hose people in Gaza is bad.

Maduro is bad.

Corruption in the White House is bad.

Selective Justice is bad.

Special forces placing bets on Polymarket is bad.

They are different things.

If you think Hamas, the Islamic Republic, and Maduro are/were peace-loving good guys, I have a bridge to sell you. Whatever you think about the US, anyone who isn’t drowning in propaganda must know that those guys are at best no better, and they don’t have even a facade of a justice system that people wronged by those governments can turn to for relief.

For instance, the moment the Gaza ceasefire allowed Hamas to continue to operate, we all witnessed them dragging their own citizens into the street and summarily executing them for supposed “collaboration.”

But regardless of your opinion of the relative morality of the various parties, the days of the civilized world just sitting around and allowing things like October 7th to happen with no consequences appear to be over.

Nobody is saying that they are peace loving guys. But the zionists aren't any better, there is nothing that can justify the rapes and the genocide the US and particularly the zionists do.

"we all witnessed them dragging their own citizens into the street and summarily executing them for supposed “collaboration.” "

No we did not because most of us try not to consume Mossad propaganda.

If you think that starving children, and settlers killing kids is a "justice system", If you think that stealing and destroying Lebanon is what the "civilized world" does, If you do not think that October 7 was the clear reaction to being starved to death, Then your definitions of civilization and justice are just fucked up.

> For instance, the moment the Gaza ceasefire allowed Hamas to continue to operate, we all witnessed them dragging their own citizens into the street and summarily executing them for supposed “collaboration.”

wouldn't be the first time people from a group aided in the genocide of that group. what do you expect will happen to such people?

it's easy to put quotes around the word "collaboration", but go on, tell us what you know about these people, make your case that they weren't actually collaborators.

The moment the allies liberated France, the collaborators were stripped, shaved, and hung from a lamp post.

Yes hamas is a messed up organisation, but that's come about as a result of Israeli actions. You can the lack of law and order as a reason to continue preventing that law and order, just the same as you can't use what the french did as an argument for giving France back to the Nazis.

> are/were peace-loving good guys,

And the US is?

there's two takes. either the US are the 'good guys' in which case they should be aiming to reduce the impact on the innocent civilian population and escalate the situation, bring the 'bad guys' to trail, and kill them if necessary. with the ultimate goal of bringing real peace.

or the US are the 'bad guys', only out to set the world in a way in which most favors them, and screw the consequences. if the US is really operating this way, then questions of morality and who did what to whom are completely irrelevant. it doesn't matter if someone oppresses someone over there, or kills a bunch of people, not of any concern unless the situation can be exploited.

as far as I can tell, the US has been acting in the latter mode for quite a while, and any pretense that they really are the 'good guys' is wearing quite thin.

personally, I agreed with Trumps stated policy, that we should stop trying to claim some worldwide jurisdiction and wading into these situations unilaterally. Where I didn't is that I think its in everyone's interest to have diplomatic discussions and form international coalitions about matters of mutual interest. but of course all that is completely academic at this point.

“Good guys” vs “bad guys” is a mirage. No one, specially not nation states fit neatly into the labels goo or bad. Every country is firstly motivated by their self interest, dos that make them all bad?

I also disagree with the monochrome framing of good and bad, I should have made is clearer that if the person I was replying to want to really talk about 'bad guys', then you end up in kind of contradiction.

I guess thats one way to look at it. But thats morality for you.

I'd just suggest maybe get less involved with the internet and as the kids say these days 'go touch some grass'.

Because, frankly, I don't think the average, or even marginal Venezuelan would agree with you at all, as, they have actually had to deal with this dictator.

The dictator is labeled the ”dictator” because they’re under fire by US not because they’re an actual dictator. Look at gulf countries and the other dictators that US is partnered with like Al-Sisi in Egypt and the King of Jordan.

Besides the regime did not change. It’s the same regime, the only difference is that US benefits (or some individual people or companies in the US) from this version.

This is ridiculous cope. At least, I myself can provide some sources:

Human Rights Foundation: https://hrf.org/latest/hrf-condemns-fraudulent-election-resu...

Carter Center: https://www.cartercenter.org/stories/center-finds-democracy-...

CSIS: https://www.csis.org/analysis/can-maduro-pull-mother-all-ele...

Plenty of evidence of huge human rights crimes under the Maduro regime, investigations made by United Nations. He also stole the elections.

You can disagree with how he was removed but don’t give the guy legitimacy please, he’s a thug.

> Because, frankly, I don't think the average, or even marginal Venezuelan would agree with you at all, as, they have actually had to deal with this dictator.

why do you think that? when was the last time you were in venezuela? first you tell someone to get off the internet for a bit and touch grass, then you gesture vaguely at what you think... which came from where exactly? different parts of the internet? cable news? where?

Immense majority of the country wanted him out. This is not even an argument at this point. You could argue Chavez was very popular for the most part, but Maduro? Even the communist party of Venezuela wanted him out.

an immense majority wanted him kidnapped by america? either you've inadvertantly shifted the goalpost or i'll need something to back that up, because i find that hard to believe.

I can speak just for myself and all my relatives and friends who wanted him out. I’d hoped it could be through other means but I’ll take this. Hopefully this leads to a transition and we get back to having a normal country like we’ve been yearning for so many years now.

Go ask a Venezuelan if you know one. We tried everything and only received violence. Personally Maduro got what he deserved. The regime is still there I know but it’s a bit of justice.

> Because, frankly, I don't think the average, or even marginal Venezuelan would agree with you at all, as, they have actually had to deal with this dictator.

They still have to deal with a dictator. Just one that is willing to pay extortion money to America. Venezuela did not had elections and has still the same regime in the same power.

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