I don't really know what to say at this point.
As far as the legality of what we did, I don't see a problem with it (at least I don't think so). The United States should be able to steamroll some random guy in Grenada or Venezuela if we feel like he's a bad actor. International law and the ICC is a bad joke and shouldn't constrain our behavior. Domestically, the War Powers resolution should allow the executive to do something like this.
The problem is, why are we doing this? And who is "we"? I have never seen convincing evidence that removing Maduro will reduce the flow of drugs into the US, or that it will remove communism from the country. As far as the oil, if Exxon Mobil or whoever is able to drill in Venezuelan oilfields now, that's great for them, but how does it benefit the rest of us? For some reason, I don't think Americans will get anything out of this.
The drug angle is especially stupid because Trump just pardoned another South American head of state (Juan Hernandez) who is on tape wanting to "shove cocaine up the noses of gringos."
The only country that tangibly benefits, at this point, is Israel, given that Venezuela has been a known and acknowledged thorn in their side for years. It's no surprise that the next presidential hopeful Maria Machado will not shut up about how many things she's ready to do for them.
Some people are alleging that China and Russia were establishing a foothold in our backyard with Venezuela. They do indeed supply some oil to China (2-5% of China's supply) but I haven't heard of any other involvement, certainly nothing substantial enough to warrant regime change.
I also have a problem with the example this is setting globally. We are going to charge a foreign head of state with possession of machine guns? So when Germany brings an American citizen up on charges for violating their hate speech laws are we going to pretend we're better than that? Are we still going to pretend that Russia invading Ukraine was unjustified?
If Maduro was repeatedly aggressing on the US and uniting himself with China/Russia, I don't think I have a problem with this. But I just don't see it.
This is embarrassing. That baboon literally just pardoned an actual narcotrafficker.
Have some dignity.
If you mean the former president of Honduras, who cooperated with cartels to move drugs through his territory, that guy was a facilitator, not a major player, and it's pretty fucking obvious to anyone who isn't suffering from terminal TDS that that pardon was in return for information that could lead to the arrest of much more important cartel leaders.
Imagine believing that Maduro is a major player and that guy is merely a facilitator.
Ah, totally forgot that this is 913-dimensional chess. Trust the plan, guys, and you have TDS if you question it.
You only have to play one dimension of Chess to offer clemency and protection to one criminal in order to get him to inform on other criminals. It's literally Criminal Investigation 101.
1D or 913D, it's obvious nonsense that you made up to try to excuse the inexcusable.
He pardoned the corrupt jackass because he was of the same party as the guy he was trying to prop up. No other reason.
Hell, Trump was directly threatening Honduras on election day what would happen if his guy didn't win.
I know nothing about the candidate he endorsed but it wouldn't shock me if he was another birth rate cultist.
[sane, reasonable comment.]
[sane, reasonable comment.]
[total craziness]
Still, have an upvote.
Come on lol, that's laughable. The only thing that's happened with the Honduran cartel since then is one of the case's major witnesses getting executed in prison with like 100 gunshots.
Takes time to build cases. I don't know if any of the information this guy clearly provided in exchange for that pardon will ever pay dividends. It might have been a bad call: it's just obvious that that was the deal they made.
There's no reason to believe that Hernandez' pardon will reduce drug trafficking and plenty of good reasons to believe it'll increase trafficking, at least in Honduras.
It's not even safe to nominally assume that the feds want to stop trafficking.
Where did the Trump admin say that?