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Air Strikes in Caracas

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LordCBH said:
The fact that we've allowed a communist dictatorship to exist just 90 miles off our coast is still insane to me.
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Marco Rubio is going to rectify that. Folks are arguing back and forth all over the internet about Trump, but this isn't his wheelhouse. Trump is generally non-interventionist, same with JD Vance. Rubio on the other hand, is hawkish. He is a Cuban American, and they hate the Castro family as well as communist dictatorships.

This whole operation has Rubio's thumbprint all over it. He will likely have toppled two dictatorships in Latin America without having to be President.
 
Toons said:
Let me rephrase. Its not how we SHOULD do things here.

As in, this is a United States of America where the commander in chief is supposed to have checks and balances and be accountable for actiosk taken without approval by those checks and balances

I miss when that was not a controversial thing but we've been past that point for a while now it seems
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Hasn't been that way in my lifetime which, according to GAF, began before the Revolutionary War so...

old man GIF
 
Rentahamster said:
I think offensive regime change in a foreign land for oil is a mistake America keeps making every 20 or so years but never seems to remember why.
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I think the outcome of this will depend heavily on the kind of deal the Trump administration does with the Venezuelan military.
They seem willing enough to have the regime change since they did not really put up a fight. But if now the US begins exploiting all the oil resources and don't give anything to the military in return I can see tensions rising and perhaps ending up in yet again another guerrilla warfare situation 9.0 electric boogaloo.

Unless the US manage to completely dismantle the regime's military and their influence over Venezuela but that doesn't seem to be the case yet.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
They said Maduro preferred Cuban security for protection because he didnt trust local Venezuelan's selling him out.

If the president doesnt even trust his own people like that, it goes to show what a shitshow the country is in. lol
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"It is also a habit of tyrants to prefer the company of aliens to that of citizens at table and in society; citizens, they feel, are enemies, but aliens will offer no opposition."

"Also their bodyguard is of a royal and not a tyrannical type for the same reason; for kings are guarded by the citizens in arms, whereas tyrants have foreign guards, for kings rule in accordance with law and over willing subjects, but tyrants rule over unwilling subjects, owing to which kings take their guards from among the citizens but tyrants have them to guard against the citizens."

-Aristotle

These foreign guards also tend to melt away rapidly when shit gets real, it's one thing harassing regular people, it's different when cruise missiles start landing around your ears.
 
GudOlRub said:
I think the outcome of this will depend heavily on the kind of deal the Trump administration does with the Venezuelan military.
They seem willing enough to have the regime change since they did not really put up a fight. But if now the US begins exploiting all the oil resources and don't give anything to the military in return I can see tensions rising and perhaps ending up in yet again another guerrilla warfare situation 9.0 electric boogaloo.

Unless the US manage to completely dismantle the regime's military and their influence over Venezuela but that doesn't seem to be the case yet.
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Yeah the problem is that whoever fills the power vacuum is likely to be just as corrupt as Maduro. Regime changes never seem to go well and you would be crazy to send in civilians to oversee oil production without a military presence and I don't think we have any plan to do that - plus that also never seems to go well.
This was an amazing military operation but I'm not confident it will go any better than Iraq in the long term.
 
Toons said:
Were both smart enough to know this isn't an isolated event and it will have ramifications far beyond just the "removal of an illegitimate dictator".

Especially when it was done without congress approval. Aka not how we do things here.

You cannot say the ends justify the means when the ends haven't even begin to manifest themselves yet.
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What's the alternative, Cuba 2.0? They were about to become worse than that considering Maduro's right hand is the one handling all the drug trafficking, Tren de Aragua acts like a mob infiltrating countries, co-opting illegal business to send the dirty money back to Maduro and then you have the Cuban Intelligence supporting Maduro in exchange of oil

You have ramifications already thanks to the previous administration, letting people get in without any vetting led to how many Tren de Aragua criminals in the States? There are 9M Venezuelans outside of their country, not because they fancy the idea, they were pushed by the Government, in a country where you could travel nationwide for a dime, but you couldn't buy toilet paper because inflation was so high

I know TDS is real, but when the man says the Government of Venezuela deals with drugs like an ordinary cartel and has its own arm that deals with illicit businesses in other countries to use the dirty money and sustain itself, he's not lying

And before anyone says, "it's because of the oil" Chevron is one of the last corporations able to work in Venezuela without repercutions, Venezuela needs more refined oil (they can't process themselves) than USA needs crude
 
I am impressed. I don't think it necessarily gives the green light for China to do the same. If anything, attacking a capital and getting the President in 3 hours is quite terrifying if you are China. That's like Half Life 2 Combine level of military capability. In isolation, Venezuela is a shit hole. Millions have to fled, as many as Ukraine without even being at war. I think people underestimate how bad a place needs to be for that. However, I am less sure of the long. Even in the best case scenario and under American control it becomes Norway but warm, it will only take another Maduro to come along and ruin it again which is why America might never leave. Rome was right. The European empires were right. If you want to really change a country you need to occupy and directly govern it indefinitely. America isn't going to invest billions if in ten years it all gets confiscated again. In that way Putin is more honest about his want to control Ukraine forever.
 
News says about 8M people have left Venezuela the past decade. The country right now has about 30M (sites have have different ranges so I just took 30M as good enough), so the county has lost about 20% of people.

The gov also had serious anti-business policies in like fixed prices, capped profit margins and manufacturing quotas how much product can be made. What a shit show of business practices. No wonder the private sector collapsed beyond just the oil industry. So a company could be forced to make government mandated products even if it was at a loss. Business goes bankrupt and gov doesnt care. Crazy.
 
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Topher said:
Yeah, and then the big ones: Korea and Vietnam. Congress never declared war in either of those.
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Well, yeah, but I kept it to 30 years since I have only been in the country since the mid 80s :).

I did forget about Libya, Serbia and a few other places.
 
Telemundo is the channel to watch right now, lots of interviews going on with random people who are celebrating Maduro's fall in Columbia.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
News says about 8M people have left Venezuela the past decade. The country right now has about 30M (sites have have different ranges so I just took 30M as good enough), so the county has lost about 20% of people.

The gov also had serious anti-business policies in like fixed prices, capped profit margins and manufacturing quotas how much product can be made. What a shit show of business practices. No wonder the private sector collapsed beyond just the oil industry. So a company could be forced to make government mandated products even if it was at a loss. Business goes bankrupt and gov doesnt care. Crazy.
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U

Post in thread 'Air Strikes in Caracas'

It's difficult to explain the vast Venezuelan Diaspora that Chavez and Maduro's regimes created over the past decades to someone who doesn't understand it

Fully 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country during the years of their rule, which is a staggering 25% of that whole country's population. In terms of absolute numbers, it's the 2nd largest currently active refugee crisis in the world

The "Bolivarian Diaspora" hasn't just been a disaster for Venezuela, but also for the surrounding nations in Central and South America none of which had the resources or economic capacity to just...
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Topher said:
Yeah, and then the big ones: Korea and Vietnam. Congress never declared war in either of those.
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It's not just about war declarations though is it? Bush did ask Congress for permission to invade Iraq so there kinda is some precedent for that. But then again Obama didn't ask before bombing Lybia iirc so it's an iffy situation.
In any other administration there probably would be some pushback from Congress for not being in on it, even if they didn't intend to stop it, but with the current government it doesn't seem like anyone really cares about stuff like this so it is what it is.
 
Nintendo's Witch said:
Now do Cuba pls USA. Thx.
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Don't worry, Rubio's on it. He's the real power in Washington right now, he managed to get Trump to change his non-interventionist stance and support regime change. He has outmaneuvered JD Vance in getting the President's ear and is going to be literally running Venezuela for the time being.

Rubio's eyes are on Cuba. He's Cuban American. It's personal for him.
 
this is bad news bears for the russian economy since trump can now flush the price of oil downward, meaning putin's supply dominance is going to fall apart fast.
 
GudOlRub said:
It's not just about war declarations though is it? Bush did ask Congress for permission to invade Iraq so there kinda is some precedent for that. But then again Obama didn't ask before bombing Lybia iirc so it's an iffy situation.
In any other administration there probably would be some pushback from Congress for not being in on it, even if they didn't intend to stop it, but with the current government it doesn't seem like anyone really cares about stuff like this so it is what it is.
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War declarations were a point made earlier, but no it doesn't have to go that far. As I recall, the Trump administration was trying to find legal ways to justify the operation back in December and they supposedly did. So I guess it really depends on what the operation actually is.
 
Nocty said:
this is bad news bears for the russian economy since trump can now flush the price of oil downward, meaning putin's supply dominance is going to fall apart fast.
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How are they going to flush the price of oil downwards though? All of the problems in Venezuela still exist today as they did yesterday.
 

Venezuela vice president Rodriguez in Russia, four sources say


Jan 3 (Reuters) - Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez is in Russia, four sources familiar with her movements said on Saturday, after President Donald Trump said President Nicolas Maduro had been seized by U.S. forces after an attack on the country.
Her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the national assembly, is in Caracas, three sources with knowledge of his whereabouts said.
Delcy Rodriguez appeared in an audio message on state television earlier in the day, calling for proof of life of Maduro and his wife Cilia, while Jorge Rodriguez has not appeared since the attack.
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The rats are already jumping ship...
 
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Meicyn said:
It also fucks OPEC.
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I don't really think OPEC cares. They would be happy to see the price of oil go low enough to bankrupt the American frackers who have thrown a wrench into their domination of global oil production

And the Americans will now be getting crude from Venezuela which means they won't need the fracking as much either so it's kind of a win-win for OPEC, the only real losers will be Russia in this equation and I think we can all agree that's a good scenario
 
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