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dpedu | 1 month ago

This seems like the type of comment the parent comment is referring to. It's day 1 of the invasion. Why have you concluded the US is unable to put anything in the place of Venezuela's previous government?

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fn-mote|1 month ago

> Why have you concluded the US is unable to put anything in the place of Venezuela's previous government?

Any student of history would be skeptical. The US record after interference in a country is abysmal. Relatively recent failures: Iraq, Afghanistan. Less recent failures: Nicaragua and throughout Central America.

t-3|1 month ago

I would include Libya. Gaddafi died, we were happy, Libya became a hellhole with open slave markets. The same can easily happen here if they don't have a good plan.

potato3732842|1 month ago

Afghanistan was a weird "how long to we have to pretend to give a shit before we give it back to the guys we never really wanted to take it from in the first place" situation.

Iraq was a textbook example of why you don't dismantle the entire administrative state.

I don't think either is relevant here. Other central american shenanigans are the better reference points IMO.

shaky-carrousel|1 month ago

On the other hand, Chile was a success. Not ethically, of course, but they accomplished what they wanted.

inglor_cz|1 month ago

As of 2025, Iraq looks better than it used to.

No strongman in charge, sorta-kinda democratic government (more democratic than almost anywhere else in the Arab world), violence has subsided, the country didn't disintegrate into pieces unlike Yugoslavia, the economy has grown moderately, and they haven't become an Iranian puppet regime.

Frankly, by the standards of the Near and Middle East, this is very much not an abysmal failure.

The insurgency that preceded this was very bad, though. No denying that. But some other modern nations have such insurgencies in their recent history, such as Ireland, and that didn't stop them from developing towards prosperity.

adventured|1 month ago

It took decades for the US to stabilize itself as a nation after its birth.

Why would you think Iraq would find it easy to stabilize itself post Hussein, such that you'd declare their future void already. Iraq is not yet a failure and is dramatically more stable than it was under Hussein (dictatorships bring hyper instability universally, which is why they have to constantly murder & terrify everybody to try to keep the system from instantly imploding due to the perpetual instability inherent in dictatorship).

Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Kuwait, and most of Eastern Europe (which the US was extremely deep in interfering with for decades in competition with the USSR). You can also add Colombia to that list, it is a successful outcome thus far of US interference.

I like the part where people pretend the vast interference in positive outcomes don't count. The US positively, endlessly interfered in Europe for the past century. That interference has overwhelmingly turned out well.

dnautics|1 month ago

eh, germany and japan seemed to go okay, grenada too. korea kind of a mixed bag (it took decades for it to not suck)

LastTrain|1 month ago

I conclude that you cannot apply consequentialism when the outcome is unknown, so the US has done something immoral and illegal, end of story.

bluecalm|1 month ago

Idk man, if my country was ruled by a dictator who faked elections I would be very happy to see some outsiders removing him. Kidnapping (and hopefully jailing for a long time) anyone who is in power by cheating the election is a big moral win in my book.

tbrownaw|1 month ago

> cannot apply consequentialism when the outcome is unknown

Can you not substitute the mean expected outcome where the factual outcome is not yet known?

calf|1 month ago

Recklessness is immoral, and look how the discourse normalizes it so cleverly.

paganel|1 month ago

> Why have you concluded the US is unable to put anything in the place of Venezuela's previous government?

Because they failed doing that in Iraq and Afghanistan, both cases where they did try, and there is also Libya (where they did not try all that much, if at all, I'll give you that). I mean, they did put some of their puppets in both Kabul and Bagdad, but the puppets in Kabul eventually got swept by the Talibans, while the puppets in Bagdad switched over to Iran's side by 2015-ish.

somewhereoutth|1 month ago

As far as I can ascertain, there is no invasion. Just a special ops kidnapping.

It is unclear what will happen next, but likely the regime or large elements of it will survive. Perhaps a more moderate faction will take control? That would be the best case scenario.

dpark|1 month ago

> there is no invasion. Just a special ops kidnapping

When one nation’s military illegally enters another nation’s sovereign territory to carry out military actions, that’s usually called an invasion.

bluecalm|1 month ago

Surely the best case scenario is the regime collapsing, all collaborators of Maduro ending up dead or in jail and then the guy who actually won the election or a women who would have won it ending up in power?

FireBeyond|1 month ago

No - Trump has just announced that he intends for the US to "run" Venezuela for the time being and that that will include ... shock horror... American oil companies taking a significant role in the country's oil infrastructure.

coldpie|1 month ago

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tasuki|1 month ago

> The president is in late-stage dementia, and his cabinet couldn't put together a peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

Well, they just managed to organize the kidnapping of a head of state!

sigwinch|1 month ago

During the 2024 campaign, oil executives met at Mar-a-Lago and agreed to pay $1B to Trump’s campaign. It is one or more of those men who will be interfacing with the Venezuelan generals about shifting their oil away from China.

CjHuber|1 month ago

I still don’t get these kinds of comments. Is it supposed to be funny because it’s so hyperbolic? I’d hope debates here would at least acknowledge that he’s pursuing some broader aims even if most of it is probably just to benefit his friends. Does anyone really think his actions lack any ulterior motives especially with how the cabinet is selected? You can‘t deny that he has more agency then a Government-by-committee-by-proxy like Bidens final years were like, where it really felt like it was dementia taking over. I feel it’s absurd to claim that a president is incompetent for not serving his people if that is not his goal in the first place.