Venezuela: What is this?

[Physics Guy]

Kidnapping Maduro and bringing him to the US for trial might be a great thing. He was a dictator running an oppressive regime. Ideally Maduro would now be tried by an international court for crimes against humanity, not in an American court for running a drug cartel—a charge he might just beat, because it's not clear that the claim he was a cartel boss is anything but a fantasy. But if every dictator had to be afraid at any moment that highly trained soldiers would suddenly whisk him away for trial, well, hasten that day.

What worries me are the airstrikes: fast-moving aircraft fired high explosive into cities. Were they really so surgically precise that they only took out military equipment? So far I haven't seen any specific reports of Venezuelan casualties, and as long as it stays that way then probably no news is good news, but I'm expecting bad news any moment.

Killing some of a drug lord's goons in the process of apprehending the drug lord might be acceptable, but does every Venezuelan soldier count as a drug gangster? Should young Venezuelans who were just doing their job, defending their country, be killed to bring their president to justice? If this were a war, I guess so. That's the risk soldiers take. But this wasn't a war.

And how many Venezuelan civilians were killed or horribly injured in those airstrikes? In wars between nation states, where the enemy civilian population is supporting the enemy war effort, there is plenty of precedent for bombing civilians, unfortunately. Again, though, this wasn't a war—and the whole justification for arresting Maduro was supposed to be that he was an illegitimate ruler oppressing his country's civilians, was it not? How many American civilians would it be acceptable for the FBI to kill while arresting a criminal?

Maybe those were amazingly careful airstrikes, but otherwise I'm expecting to learn that President Trump, the generals who planned and commanded this mission, and everyone down to the pilots who pulled the triggers are all guilty of a number of murders. No degree of disciplined perfection in how other parts of this mission went will make up for that.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

There’s very little international precedent for one country just snatching a sitting head of state and putting them on trial at home. Noriega, for example, was unusual and widely condemned. It was never treated as a general license to abduct foreign leaders.

International law deliberately separates accountability from unilateral force. The logic that “justice justifies any violence” collapses the whole system international law was designed to protect and make accountability arbitrary, not just.

Reference air strikes accidentally causing collateral damage, well, yeah. That’s a problem, hence why madmen shouldn’t have unilateral power to do this sort of thing. And this includes Obama’s unilateral drone strikes, because they set a dangerous precedent of one country deciding who lives or dies without legal oversight.

[canpakes]

How about this one?



They’re damned fascists.

This is actually pretty amazing, considering who she’s married to.

What keeps the Administration and its MAGA base from rationalizing the kidnapping of any leadership of any country for any reason, to achieve their aims, if this is the mindset that they advertise?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Esta administração é uma porcaria.

[Equality]

Esta administração é uma porcaria.

Interesting how MAGA folks believe that the US President has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for crimes he commits as President but don't think this principle applies to the executive leaders of other countries.

[Jersey Girl]

Ok, I get it. How about the fact that after capturing Maduro, Trump has hinted at military action in Cuba, Mexico and Colombia?

So, he just kidnapped a head of state. Stephen Miller’s wife posted that. He’s said the above, and that Canada should be our 51st state. Is he reminding you of any historical figures?

Now. Think about how giddy MAGA is feeling about this illegal action, how happy they are about thugs terrorizing Americans & immigrants, and that they’ve turned their little dead fascist propagandist into their own Horst Wessel (look him up in Wiki), where do you actually see with your own eyes that we’re headed?

Me in the basement, surrounded by loved ones, loaded ARs (and their colleagues), eating MREs and buckets of survival food, trying to figure out if a cat will fit in a cast iron dutch oven if need be, with Colonel Mustard running us through gas mask drills and teaching us to field dress the deer?

[Everybody Wang Chung]

I’m not saying I support aggressive foreign intervention, but if a random country wanted to kidnap Trump and throw him in jail on charges, I think we could call it a diplomatic win.

[Jersey Girl]

Ok, I get it. How about the fact that after capturing Maduro, Trump has hinted at military action in Cuba, Mexico and Colombia?

So, he just kidnapped a head of state. Stephen Miller’s wife posted that. He’s said the above, and that Canada should be our 51st state. Is he reminding you of any historical figures?

Now. Think about how giddy MAGA is feeling about this illegal action, how happy they are about thugs terrorizing Americans & immigrants, and that they’ve turned their little dead fascist propagandist into their own Horst Wessel (look him up in Wiki), where do you actually see with your own eyes that we’re headed?

Me in the basement, surrounded by loved ones, loaded ARs (and their colleagues), eating MREs and buckets of survival food, trying to figure out if a cat will fit in a cast iron dutch oven if need be, with Colonel Mustard running us through gas mask drills and teaching us to field dress the deer?

Let me make another run at that question.

Three guys walk into a bar. One from the US, one from Russia, and one from China. The get together and make a deal. In a show of good faith, the China guy volunteers to pick off the guy in North Korea and take his stuff. They declare martial law across the globe where the only way to engage in commerce is to use a certain Gold Card with the face, I mean mark,of the face of the originator. Then three guys walk into a bar to divide up global wealth into three kingdoms following which two guys get together on their own in some other bar and hatch a plan to pick off the third guy and take his stuff. The remaining two guys join forces to rule the world until one guy gets sick of Trump's babbling, picks Trump off, locks him up in an asylum, and takes his stuff. The third guy rules the world on his own.

We'd be headed somewhere like that with me back in the basement doing all the things.

[Jersey Girl]

There’s very little international precedent for one country just snatching a sitting head of state

How was Maduro a sitting head of state?

[Res Ipsa]

There’s very little international precedent for one country just snatching a sitting head of state

How was Maduro a sitting head of state?

Because he is literally the head of state according to the government of Venezuela. Whether other governments recognize him as the legitimate head of state is a separate issue. If Trump had succeeded in stealing the 2020 election, he would have been properly described as the sitting head of state. Zelenskyy is the sitting head of state in Ukraine, whether Trump or Putin or anyone else considers his presidency legitimate.

Maduro is still the head of state despite his lawless kidnapping by the US government. He’ll be the heads of state until the Venezuelan government says otherwise.