Maduro was president of a sovereign country. A bunch of kidnappers and murderers invaded the building he was in in Caracas, murdered everyone in the room, then kidnapped him and his wife.
What's the "mission"? To pop up in some room and slaughter everyone in it, then kidnap his wife and him? In order to help steal the resources, billions of dollars in oil, for already wealthy people?
Same thing happening in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria. Israel with US help slaughtering people to steal their land and resources.
There's no mission except theft and murder. There's no corruption because the entire enterprise is rotten to begin with.
It's funny how we accept the importance given to that statement. when he's just some dude who took control of a country and gave himself that title. As if the social construction means anything in this situation.
I found it hard to figure out which side the GP came down on, but perhaps it's not taking a side and merely pointing out the irony and the death of legitimacy. Maybe there is no such thing as government anymore, and it all comes down to goons with guns.
This stands in contrast to the ideals of a society based on laws and rules, where corruption is a notable exception.
We stand on the precipice of abandoning what the world worked so hard for decades to build...
Whether there was also cooperation from the Venezuelan military, failure to shoot down helicopters, etc, is a different matter.
Speaking like a man without access to a discombobulator.
The relationship with SA has materially changed.
1. The United States is willing to violate South American sovereignty.
2. South America has offered little resistance to this incident.
Things like genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, violating other countries sovereignty with no strong justification, development of nuclear weapons, etc.
So there's a bunch of red lines that clearly some countries will step over the sovereignty line, thankfully so!
I'm not saying the US was right about what they did in Venezuela, but clearly Maduro wasn't recognized as the president of Venezuela by venezuelans and many countries.
Restrictions on building nuclear bombs are defined in the voluntary Non-Proliferation Treaty, and is not applicaple to non-parties (India, Israel, Pakistan, South Sudan).
Every foreign intervention done by US / NATO through-out has backfired, and worsened the problem it tried to solve.
Case in point: CIA covertly arms Afghan Mujahideen fighters to wage war against the Soviet Union by proxy in the 80s - 90s. But David Hasselhoff did a song, so the Soviet Union fell apart, and Afghan fighters pivoted to civil warfare as Taliban.
Sadam Hussein was a rogue US puppet-dictatorship gone wrong. But 'freeing' Iraq from Hussein entailed destroying their entire civilisation. Just the mayhem caused a million deaths through starvation, sectorial violence, collapsed healthcare, terrorists roaming the streets, etc.
We also destroyed Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Libya, Yemen, Guatemala, Chile, etc. (At least for a while)
NATO member states are free to pursue interventions, but they then do not get NATO protection.
The UN has a body that regulates nuclear energy, called IAEA, and they can definitely bring violations to the Security Council.
> Every foreign intervention done by US / NATO through-out has backfired, and worsened the problem it tried to solve.
That's quite a bold claim:
- first by focusing only in the US / NATO, and leaving out interventions of the UN. Why is that?
- would you say that the people in Kosovo are worse than they were before NATO intervention? Or South Korea with the intervention of the UN? Or even Ukraine today with the help of NATO?
- it's funny you blame the CIA for the consequences of the Afghanistan war, yet you don't blame the USSR who invaded Afghanistan in the first place!
It's like for you, the USSR losing the Afghanistan war was a bad thing, and the collapse of the USSR as well, and the CIA was to blame for all of that? What's going on there?
As for Saddam, he shouldn't have invaded Kuwait, let alone the other atrocities.
You seem to have a lot of grievances towards US / NATO, and very little against USSR and Russia "interventions".
Like what they did in Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and the other atrocities in Africa, and Asia with their neo-nazi paramilitary group.
Anyway, I don't defend everything the US / NATO / UN did - but one thing is sure (up until today), none of them expanded their borders and attempted to annex land.
It is, but it's kind of a thin lie.
How's sovereignty going for ukraine? Hong kong? Chechnya, South ossetia, and abkhazia? Puerto Rico? Western Sahara? Parts of Sudan? Border regions of bhutan? South american fisheries? People trying to set up micronations?
Declaring yourself president means nothing. I’m the president of planet earth and nothing changes. Similarly he could go by grand pimp and it would be just as meaningful.
Legitimacy comes from all the people backing up his claim to control of the country. Further governments care about legitimacy because it’s way easier to assassinate leaders than win wars and leaders don’t want to be at risk. It’s pure self interest protecting each other.
Maduro was a piece of…let’s keep this polite and say “work.” Everyone agrees. Does that mean what the US did was acceptable? There’s a lot of nuance and context being glossed over here.
It’s like with Iran. “Their government was horrible.” Ok, but that’s not why we attacked them. The Trump admin has explicitly said that wasn’t the motivation, but they randomly bring it up whenever they need to shift tactics. It’s a moral appeal supporters use to paper over the political realities and actual motivations.
Edit: toned down the intensity a bit.
The longer I am alive the more I realize that power is all that matters, and that rules are nice but only for the peons. "Acceptable" in this case means pretty much nothing and is a word that is philosophic in its meaning. You can yell into the clouds that something is unacceptable or unfair and it may be true in some ethical/moral sense, but it matters none. Power will always win out and if someone came to the WH and did the same thing, then there would only be one reason for it -- that there is somebody more powerful than the US and is able to get away with things like this. The masses would scream, cry and maybe some would be happy, but it wouldn't matter whatsoever. Maduro might have been bad (a great excuse for the masses to avoid revolts) but ultimately, the government made a decision to do it and that's that.
Trump lost in 2020. Harris lost in 2024. We have all sorts of external influence and nonsense happening in our social/political lives and yes many states are messing with people's ability to actually vote, but when it comes to what happens in the voting booth, US elections are incredibly secure and fraud/ballot tampering is so rare that calling it "rare" doesn't properly emphasize reality.
The vote count was accurate, Trump won, and we are all paying a horrible price for the self-inflicted chaos and regression that has ensued.
>Not that anyone would challenge it
If there were legitimate grounds to question it there is no way we wouldn't see action on it
Maduro was replaced by his equally unelected second. It is not as if Venezuela became democracy or something. Instead, a bunch of leaders got promotion including the main torturer.
I find it mind boggling that it is called regime change. Regime remained in place.
Whether Maduro is a baddie or not, taking military action requires buy-in from the UN Security Council. Specifically: nine affirmative votes from the 15-member council, provided that none of the five permanent members (China, France, Russia, UK, US) cast a veto. And it's only allowed to 'maintain or enforce international peace and security'. The charter contrasts this to building
The US should've consider how their war-plans 'maintain or enforce international peace and security' before commencing. Or even fabricate' sexed up Dossiers' on weapons of mass destruction like when the US invaded Iraq.
Self-defence is the only valid excuse for using arms without prior security council approval and acting without a plan for peace and security.
Basically Madura and his regime, along with Gaza, West Bank and others are the victims because they're less powerful and therefore above reproach? However US and Israel are currently powerful and therefore they are the only ones worthy of criticism and scorn?
Gaza, for instance, is famously anti kidnapping.
Second the west likes to take the moral high ground. That involves holding them to a higher standard.
Third, in cases such as Gaza, and the west bank, they don't have stable governments because of actions by Israel. You can't expect them to behave like a nation state in those circumstances, so yes I do expect more of Israel.
Fwiw I'm British, I remember the troubles on Northern Ireland. I don't condone what the IRA did, but I would still expect my govt to behave better, even though I agree with them.
Exactly. They are oppressed so are incapable of wrong. You can't expect them to not kidnap and murder people at a concert.
Exactly my point
If protesters throw rocks at police, would you hold the entire group responsible? Even though most were there to protest peacefully? Would you take the same view if it was the police throwing rocks?
Plus I'm not even saying it's oppressor and oppressed, it's that one group has organisation and one doesn't.
I go back to my police and protestor example? Do you apply the same rules to each? Do you think the leader of the police is more or less culpable than the leader of the protestors?
It isn't dehumanising the protestors. If anything it's the opposite, it's dehumanising the police, they are supposed not to have agency. And that's the point.
Yeah to say say protestor can't control himself from throwing rocks is pretty offensive to the protestor. Put another way, if my son was at a protest and started throwing rocks at police I wouldn't excuse that behavior like he had no choice. You always have a choice.
Whereas the police should have a culture of not throwing rocks, so serious questions should be asked of the leadership.
If you have a failed state such that large areas aren't under government control. And some warlord attacked your country, would you say that was a declaration of war from that entire country? Or would you accept the government didn't have control?
Gaza is a messed up place. You wouldn't necessarily expect all the groups to hold to a cease fire, like you would a nation with a single unified command structure.
A breach of a cease fire by Gaza says something different than a breach of a cease fire by Israel.
I'm not saying anything about individuals, I'm saying different group structures have different amounts of control over individuals in that group, so it isn't reasonable to hold them to the same standard.
To go back to your last example. Should you be held responsible for your son throwing rocks? Should that not depend upon the level of control? Or should we treat a dad handing his 5 year old a rock and instructing him to throw the rock at the police, differently to the 25 year old son that went there by him self?
If the entire enterprise is rotten, it's because it is corrupted. Unless you're an anarchist you have to accept that a democratic nation state is a legitimate enterprise that is corruptable. I don't think you can say some sub level enterprise X layers down isn't corrupt because the levels above are corrupting that legitimate core.
Primarily - the issue at hand is the legality of 'insider information' with in institutions.
But the bigger issue is how shameful it is that people can't see the absolute horror beyond their little local ideologies or political beliefs.
Maduro is one of the worst tyrants in the world, responsible for murder and imprisonment of any number of innocents and political dissidents, and the direct cause of millions of people displaced.
Venezuela is truly a horrible place, the country has fallen apart, Chavizmo has no popular legitimacy, he lost the election and remained in power.
It's impossible to speak of 'sovereignty' in that context.
What happened to Maduro was a 'net positive' - it was in fact, a crude form of 'net justice'.
It has nothing to do with Gaze, Syria, Iran etc..
And it has little to do with the cronyism of the Trump regime.
It's fair to question legality of actions, but the fact that people could see Maduro is anything but a criminal in the most common sense, is beyond pale. That's the real issue here actually, the inability for people to contextualize complex issues especially in light of basic moral concerns.
The violence against all hose people in Gaza is bad.
Maduro is bad.
Corruption in the White House is bad.
Selective Justice is bad.
Special forces placing bets on Polymarket is bad.
They are different things.
For instance, the moment the Gaza ceasefire allowed Hamas to continue to operate, we all witnessed them dragging their own citizens into the street and summarily executing them for supposed “collaboration.”
But regardless of your opinion of the relative morality of the various parties, the days of the civilized world just sitting around and allowing things like October 7th to happen with no consequences appear to be over.
wouldn't be the first time people from a group aided in the genocide of that group. what do you expect will happen to such people?
it's easy to put quotes around the word "collaboration", but go on, tell us what you know about these people, make your case that they weren't actually collaborators.
As usual - say anything anti-Israel and expect to get downvoted by Zionists who won't leave a reply, because they know they're full of shit.
"we all witnessed them dragging their own citizens into the street and summarily executing them for supposed “collaboration.” "
No we did not because most of us try not to consume Mossad propaganda.
If you think that starving children, and settlers killing kids is a "justice system", If you think that stealing and destroying Lebanon is what the "civilized world" does, If you do not think that October 7 was the clear reaction to being starved to death, Then your definitions of civilization and justice are just fucked up.
Yes hamas is a messed up organisation, but that's come about as a result of Israeli actions. You can the lack of law and order as a reason to continue preventing that law and order, just the same as you can't use what the french did as an argument for giving France back to the Nazis.
And the US is?
or the US are the 'bad guys', only out to set the world in a way in which most favors them, and screw the consequences. if the US is really operating this way, then questions of morality and who did what to whom are completely irrelevant. it doesn't matter if someone oppresses someone over there, or kills a bunch of people, not of any concern unless the situation can be exploited.
as far as I can tell, the US has been acting in the latter mode for quite a while, and any pretense that they really are the 'good guys' is wearing quite thin.
personally, I agreed with Trumps stated policy, that we should stop trying to claim some worldwide jurisdiction and wading into these situations unilaterally. Where I didn't is that I think its in everyone's interest to have diplomatic discussions and form international coalitions about matters of mutual interest. but of course all that is completely academic at this point.
Probably also ignorant of how the average Palestinian feels about Hamas and butchering Israelis as a foundation of their national psyche.
Venezuelans are having political gatherings for the first time in a decade.
so you see something on tv and just believe the impression that it leaves you with. you actually think it's plausible that a majority of people in a city support the side of a conflict that is bombing that city?
i'm sure a majority of people support the war; specifically they support the irgc in fighting back against america and israel, who have started a war of aggression against iran for no coherent reason.
I'd just suggest maybe get less involved with the internet and as the kids say these days 'go touch some grass'.
Because, frankly, I don't think the average, or even marginal Venezuelan would agree with you at all, as, they have actually had to deal with this dictator.
Besides the regime did not change. It’s the same regime, the only difference is that US benefits (or some individual people or companies in the US) from this version.
Human Rights Foundation: https://hrf.org/latest/hrf-condemns-fraudulent-election-resu...
Carter Center: https://www.cartercenter.org/stories/center-finds-democracy-...
CSIS: https://www.csis.org/analysis/can-maduro-pull-mother-all-ele...
You can disagree with how he was removed but don’t give the guy legitimacy please, he’s a thug.
why do you think that? when was the last time you were in venezuela? first you tell someone to get off the internet for a bit and touch grass, then you gesture vaguely at what you think... which came from where exactly? different parts of the internet? cable news? where?
Go ask a Venezuelan if you know one. We tried everything and only received violence. Personally Maduro got what he deserved. The regime is still there I know but it’s a bit of justice.
They still have to deal with a dictator. Just one that is willing to pay extortion money to America. Venezuela did not had elections and has still the same regime in the same power.
|not ok to kidnap - - - - - - - ok to kidnap|?
He indeed was an illegitimate ruler, but that is completely unrelated to what we did.
I just want better. But we so rarely get that.
Good Luck. Hopefully we are done with our meddling for now.
Since 2013, Venezuela has been suffering a socioeconomic crisis under Maduro. He stole the last two elections and remained in power even though he had not legitimately won.
Numerous international bodies and human rights organizations have found that Nicolás Maduro and his government committed extensive human rights violations. These violations have been ongoing since at least 2014 as part of a systematic plan to repress dissent. State security forces and allied armed groups (colectivos) have been implicated in thousands of unlawful or politically motivated killings and arbitrary arrests of protesters, opposition leaders, and perceived critics.
Immediately after the latest presidential election, at least 24 people died as a result of the government’s repression of protests against the appointment of Nicolás Maduro. Most of these killings could amount to extrajudicial executions. Two of the victims were children.
Think back to January 6 - Imagine if every foreign government assumed it was stolen and decided they should take matters into their own hands. Would it help, or hurt America?
> prosecutors said Van Dyke bet more than $33,000 on Polymarket between December 27, 2025, and January 2, 2026, that Maduro would soon be out of office and that U.S. forces would soon enter Venezuela
Maduro was taken on January 3.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-soldier-charged-...
When someone bets 32k that a political opponent of the US is going to be kidnapped I think its fair to say some will assume it was placed by an insider.
You also have to think about leaning information: if people do this, bodyguards around the world are going to monitor betting markets looking for unexplained changes. The military doesn’t like anything which can leak timing information since that increases the risk of a mission failing.
What would be far larger source of risk is if they bet _against_ the operation and then personally sabotaged it. That's far more understandable but it's not what happened here.
It apparently and sadly needs to be said on Hacker News, I'm not defending him, and he should be punished, but I genuinely can't apprehend the risk assessment logic here.
This is true, just like "all lives matter" is true, and it misses the point in the exact same way.
Those people you are replying to are not saying that this soldier should get away with his corruption because more powerful people are getting away with theirs. They are saying that those who abuse greater power are doing greater harm, and that their corruption should be punished with greater urgency.
On top of the harm the powerful people inflict directly through their corrupt actions, there's a secondary effect on the society at large. Unlike trickle-down economics, trickle-down corruption is a real thing. People see those in power get away with corruption and say "Why should I do the right thing?"
Of course, the usual answer from those in power ends up being "because we have the power to punish you and you don't have the power to punish us". And that's how you end up with the arrest and prosecution of a US soldier on the same 5 counts that the top politicians and their cronies are getting away with on a daily basis, aided by the president himself.
> Those people you are replying to are not saying that this soldier should get away with his corruption because more powerful people are getting away with theirs. They are saying that those who abuse greater power are doing greater harm, and that their corruption should be punished with greater urgency.
It's like saying "we shouldn't worry about enforcing traffic laws because we need to use our resources to bring war criminals to justice" when the reason where not bringing war criminals to justice isn't for lack of concern, it's just that we have no coercive power.
Caring about prioritizing things where we do not have coercive power is pointless.
It most definitely isn't. At no point did anyone in this discussion say "we shouldn't worry about small time corruption". In fact, I explicitly said the opposite. And then I highlighted it after you essentially accused me of doing so, as you're doing again.
> Creating an "urgency chain" is effectively the same thing as justifying behavior.
No, it's not. No one is "creating" an "urgency chain". Justice isn't binary. Things can be more or less just, they're not either perfectly just or completely unjust with nothing in between. Similarly, different people have different levels of impact. That's the definition of power in this context: the level of impact your actions have. No one is "creating" these concepts out of thin air.
What is happening here is that people are complaining about injustice and other people -- like you and the person I initially replied to -- are trying to delegitimize those complaints by stating that "all corruption is bad".
Let me repeat this, in case it got lost despite earlier repetitions: yes, we all know that "all corruption is bad". Just like we all know that "all lives matter", but pointing out that banality only got popular after the "black lives matter" slogan surfaced in response to a systemic injustice against African Americans.
You're doing the same kind of thing here.
> Caring about prioritizing things where we do not have coercive power is pointless.
On the contrary. If you always give up on caring because you don't have coercive power, you will never rectify injustices caused by imbalance of coercive power.
What ? we SHOULD ABSOLUTELY create an urgency chain
40 billion of corruption is way more corrupt than 400k.
And what’s more is penalizing the 400k without penalizing the 400b means the people getting the 400b look better.
It's not that we "don't choose to"... We obviously want to, but we can't, because there is an inherent principal-agent problem that exists with high-level corruption.
Again, it's like saying "let's not take the time to charge someone with manslaughter, because there are people out there who have committed war crimes that have killed tens of thousands of people." We all want to bring the war-criminals to justices, but we can't, so it's moot.
We should spend our resources on law enforcement where we can. Otherwise it's a race to the bottom, because with justice, perfect quickly becomes the enemy of good.
But also don’t forget that this guy’s trades are a drop in the ocean compared to the rest of the likely insider trading that’s visible in the Polymarket logs. (Eg on timing of Iran attacks, Trump tariff announcements, etc)
Inequality codified into the law, literal separate rules, is worse still.
This soldier deserves his punishment. I just wish they would enforce these laws on our congressmen.
In all decent democracies elected politicians have immunity or similar safeguards, since the separation of powers (as theorized by Montesquieu in the middle of illuminism) which represents the foundation of democracy demands that both the legislative and executive power be separated from the judicial one.
“Making the politicians pay for their crimes” is often just a populist argument, while there are ways to incriminate them, expecting that they can be prosecuted like us normal citizens is not compatible with democracy.
You may not like what I said but I said it. Go read the original works by Montesquieu, he understood it first.
This is a classic “who will guard the guards themselves?” dilemma.
These are just the (little) costs of democracy. If you aren’t ready to pay them, you haven’t really considered the alternatives.
Get real, you and a lot of others here on HN are the exact reason we're stuck in this shithole. Fuck Paul Graham, by the way.
And what does Paul Graham have to do with it?
Good. Unfortunately, they succeeded. If there was any moral justice in this world, every single US soldier involved with this would have died a horrible death. Fuck them. This was just another in a long string of global terroristic events that the US was involved in.
Being a member of the US military is morally wrong. And yes, I include you(now or in the past) and all of your family members in that equation. There is no doubt about the immorality of the US military apparatus.
It's a short step from the Congress people taking advantage of foreknowledge, vs them MAKING self advantageous opportunities. And it's not guaranteed their "making" is in the public interest.