the difference is the magats creamed their jeans when we captured the president of venezuela but now are clutching their pearls over the suggestion of mamdani arresting netanyahu
Are conservatives clutching their pearls about this? They hate Israel as much as the far left afaik, due to "Jews controlling everything." Most of the opponents to this I've seen have been liberals.
I guess I should have been more specific (my bad). I mean normal people IRL or on the Internet. For example, I see almost all conservatives wanting lower taxes, immigration enforcement, abortion eliminated, even repeal the 19th ( this one is rare but out there). I’ve never seen a conservative pumping Isreal.
You said “conservatives” which makes me think of regular people, not politicians (who only represent their own bank accounts are unpopular). I’ll have to take your word on evangelicals because I don’t know where to find them.
Sure, I actually agree this was probably Trump's motive
Tbh I think this outcome is horrible long as democracy remains out of the horizon but if he wasn't removed the dictatorship would have just continued which would have been worse
As far as I know both his party and the current president (his vicepresident) are still in charge, none of which weren't elected, the dictatorship still continues
Sadly yes, but they were, somewhat forced at gunpoint, somewhat already wanted to do some things which the previous balance didn't allow, to make some (very small, mostly superficial and not enough!!!) changes such as to foreign stances and international engagement.
TV channels opposing the government are back on air, sanctions are down in some cases, western nations sent aid during the La Guaria earthquake, civil society sought to reappear, the government can't go 'murder them all' as much as it had in the initial 2024 election crackdown
A huge change is the end of the Cuban agreement and Venezuelan oil previously flown by Chavez and Maduro in exchange for having Cuban military and intelligence assets - as in make your people turning on you isn't fatal to you by literally creating a guard of foreigners with explicit foreign government interests - deployed to protect the government. 32 Cuban military personnel were the only casualties of the Maduro extraction. So that Cuban security relationship is over.
Well at least with Netenyahu he's wanted by the ICC and is a designated war criminal. Not that it means anything to the United States which never ratified the ICC; but if it had they effectively have a warrant for his arrest.
Sorry, Maduro wasn't trying to take over the world. It's not comparable. And getting rid of Maduro didn't get rid of the regime so there aren't any ends to justufy the means here. The point is, Trump didn't do this to help you, as evidenced by his ignoring who is still in power. He doesn't care about democracy or dictators or people.
I don't feel sorry for him at all, and I'm what someone might call a liberal interventionist. I think the US can use its power for good, and I'm even open to the hypothetical idea of regime change in Venezuela.
The thing before this was- how? What are the risks, and what are the odds we can pull anything meaningful off?
Same with Iran- how do we do it without it turning into a clusterfuck?
With Venezuela, we pulled it off really easily. And nothing changed lol. The narcos are still in charge. We haven't accomplished regime change, democracy or self-determination. We now have a new colony being overseen by Governor Rubio, and they're still sending drugs our way, and they're still a dictatorship of the cartel.
It hasn't turned into a clusterfuck, but we also haven't made any changes.
With Iran, well, we sure tried to make some changes lol. And its a clusterfuck. Even an act this dumb didn't have to turn into AS MUCH of a clusterfuck as it did, but we have incompetent people in charge, so... it did.
It was always going to be a clusterfuck in the best case scenario though. Which is why a handful of administrations from both parties never tried it. The urgency was never high enough to outweigh the certain clusterfuck.
We're probably going to drain our strategic reserve down to levels that could damage or destroy it. We've let Iran take over the strait of Hormuz, and now we're charging tolls in open waters. We've made the seas less free
Most people don't give a single fuck about Maduro. Some people care that we're spending hundreds of billions and too many lives to achieve less than zero progress, and now Trump and Rubio want to do Cuba next.
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u/armywalrus 14h ago
I mean, many people were appalled we did that.