And then a few seconds later: "US oil companies will go into Venezuela"

Never the US has been so honest around so many lies in the same speech.

I am still curious about the whole side bar about Washington being now safest and free of crime.

100x times this!

US administration doesn't care about the welfare of most human beings in the world (including in the US).

We saw it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia, Yemen and now Palestine. Having an assumption that this move was made for Venezuelans and now they're liberated from evil is wrong.

As opposed to what? Who "should" be the decider? China? Russia? Maduro? The Venezuelan Military?

The alternative is not that Venezuelans choose who stays in power democratically. The alternative, as we just saw until now, is that the Maduro dictatorship maintains power through force.

The whole "we got him" is a bit fishy. I think the Venezuelan military (and the current vice president) wanted Maduro out. A coup would have been messy. So the US comes in and does them a favor.

To be fair we did almost exactly this in 1989 in Panama [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...

Genuine question, the decades long dictatorship backed by the US military in 64 or the recent pressure Trump made to try and put Bolsonaro back into power despite his crimes?

All of Maduro's people are still in power and the president just said the woman who actually won the vote is not suitable to be in charge

Good luck with the US running another country when we are cratering ourselves

Impeach him and send him to the Hague for trial if this was so justified

BTW they are now talking about Cuba, we are headed for WW3 by 2028

Depending on how cynical you are, you could say that all American administrations are like that. (I don’t think that’s quite true—I think Reagan/Bush had a genuine ideological vision of using foreign policy to promote democracy and capitalism around the work. But it’s certainly a common criticism.)

Ultimately it's going to be outside actors, and no matter who it was, even the UN, Venezuela could just say we don't recognize your authority and nothing would happen

Lol this is already proven false.

The put the Vice President in power who is now coincidentally supporting what the US is doing, including sending oil companies in to as Trump put it “sell oil to the Chinese”.

Neither was doing that with other countries they ransacked. The other was pouring enough propaganda at you so that you think it is somehow different.

https://x.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2007464418565648690

I don't think this was a humanitarian mission. I'm speculating from Trump's perspective, Maduro was a major de-stabilizing factor. The Western world also seems to tacitly agree that the man had to go -- I don't think Maria Machado's recent Nobel Peace Prize was coincidence.

This is a new opinion. What is your basis for not believing might makes right in an anarchic system?

This is the key. Trump loves dictators, no matter how they got into power. As long as they give him what he wants or he's afraid of them.

What the US have just done is not something new because of Trump.

We are told about "international law" and "norms" so much that we perhaps forget that this is mostly BS.

And right now, the entire right wing is cheering on this situation. These are people who wanted an isolationist America that does not start new conflicts. Spineless Republican senators and legislators are staying quiet as they allow this horrific dictatorial action to go on without any criticism. And meanwhile, tech billionaires like Elon Musk are continuously tweeting sycophantic support for this illegal act of state terrorism.

How will America recover? Its political system is broken. And its international reputation is shattered.

Which Venezuelans? I ask because this exact same argument was used to justify the many failed assassination attempts, the Bay of Pigs debacle and sanctions on Cuba where many Cuban Americans were anti-Castro.

Now that might've been true but consider the source: many Cubans in America fled when Batista was ousted or in response to that. A famous example of that is Rafael Cruz, the father of Senator Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz famously said he hates communism because his father was tortured... by Batista [1]. And it's a failure in journalism that he wasn't challenged and lambasted for this idiotic take.

There are a lot of Venezuealsn in the US who justifiably fled the chaos there. But why was it chaotic? The US will try and tell you it's because of Maduro. But what about the sanctions? As a reminder, sanctions are a nice way of starving "we're goign to starve you and deny you medicine in the hopes you do what we want to the administration we can't otherwise topple".

Also, the US doesn't actually care about any of the crimes they accuse Maduro of. This is the same country who deposed Allende and installed Pinochet into Chile, who was a brutal dictator. That too was about resources. Oh and let's not forget Iran, who had their democratically elected government deposed to install yet another brutal dicator, the Shah, in 1953, again for oil. Or the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. The list goes on. This happens so much there's a Wikipedia page on it [2].

So, for anyone who celebates this (and I mean this generally, not at the commenter I'm responding to), you will see no benefit for this. A few billionaires will get richer, probably. The US was probably pour countless billions into supporting some puppet, probably Machado but we'll see. And I would be surprised if the lives of Venezuelans gets any better.

And if the lives of Venezuelans does actually get better, it's probably by lifting sanctions and you should be asking why we were starving them in the first place.

As a reminder, the US knows the effects of sanctions. When confronted by a report on sanctions killing 500,000 Iraqi children in 1996, then UN Ambassador and later Secretary of State responded [3]:

> “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima,” asked Stahl, “And, you know, is the price worth it?”

> “I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I2AdbLDVb0Q

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/25/lets-remember-m...

"I really want it" is not the reason. Come on! Maduro is indicted in the Southern District of New York. Both charged with conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism and import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the US.

The military operation was merely to lead the operation to allow FBI to arrest. Now, the oil issue certainly can be argued as the real reason for the strike and capture, but frankly they were OUR oil fields (funded by US companies) before Maduro seized them and nationalized them.

Good thing then that Maduro isn't the president of Venezuela, but a narco-terrorist usurper.

EDIT: Downvoting me will not change that fact, only hide it.

The U.S. has all the oil it needs right now.

The message from the U.S. to the world is: don’t nationalize our businesses infrastructure and then use it against our interests (even if they are on your sovereign territory) - we do not forgive and we do not forget.

Also I presume that it is not OK for the US to have its say on who stays in power in Venezuela, but it's OK for Cuba or Russia to do so?

This event will also serve as a measure of how strong China actually is. Venezuela is very important strategically for them, they can't let it slide unless they're weak.

Surely, they won't go as far as direct US confrontation, but if they don't make Venezuela into a death trap for any US soldier being stationed there, one can draw the conclusion that China isn't as strong as many make them (including me, I confess).

But it wouldn't be that surprising if Venezuela turns out being a death trap for any US soldier being stationed there...