I see, so your contention is that the only way the nation with the world's most powerful military can project strength is to never use that military strength for any purpose, even to advance its own interests.
Well, if what Trump has just done has made him look so weak, then I'll wait patiently to see what the international community is going to do about it.
Can't wait for Doomcock and Mike Zer0h to do their gloaty "I-told-you-so" dance as they totally predicted this would happen. Again and again.
Trump just made it clear to every banana republic president in his back yard who's been cozying up to China and every other US enemy for the past decade and more that they are not safe in their own beds. If you don't think that's a sign of strength, then you are delusional. He did so, not just in spite of his nation's enemies, but also in spite of every Boomercon Raytheon shareholder who advocates for the kind of protracted interventions that Trump has repeatedly refrained from engaging in. Far from being thrilled or ecstatic, Lindsay Graham is almost certainly sitting in his office in Washington, staring at his screen going, "Was that it? Well, now, how in the sweet-potato hell am I gonna get rich off o' that?"
It's six months after the bombing of Iran, and eight years after the bombing of Syria. No further military action on America's part has resulted from either intervention, despite the panicked, hysterical black-pilling cries to the contrary from all of your favorite controlled-oppositon pundits. We are still not in World War 3 with nukes flying over our heads, so it might be time to consider the possibility that Trump might actually know what he's doing.
What you seem to be advocating for is that America continues to be the only great power that "negotiates" in good faith with rivals who look you in the eyes and smile as you watch them take a shit in your garden. The Thomas Massie, Rand Paul libertarian utopia where the United States refuses to lift a finger to defend its own interests and the rest of the world just agrees to leave them alone in response will always be a fantasy. Every enemy of the West has been emboldened, not just by the Liberal global order's complicity in the collective suicide of Western nations, but by the perceived unwillingness of the guy with the biggest hammer in the room to bring it down.
The weak, plaintive hand-wringing of the black-pilling "dissident right" is exposed a psyop by the fact that this is how they react literally any time somebody actually does something.
There was nothing mindless about this action. As I have already said, it was a calculated, decisive move designed to send a warning. Time will tell as to whether it's successful, but it's a sharp change from the limp-wristed cringing weakness of the previous administrations, adhering to the "morality" of international law while their enemies held themselves to no such standards, and endlessly schemed, bought and bullied their way America's backyard, secure in the knowledge that they could do so with impunity. Strong nations don't act that way.
Every time Trump does literally anything outside US borders, every limp-dicked, impotent, black-pilling loser talking head on the so-called right, from Candace Owens to Fuentes to Fucker Tarlson and Dim Fool, immediately starts shrieking from the rooftops that it's going to be another quagmire, if they don't just immediately jump to "It's World War III." Every time they've been wrong.
Your entire argument is overwrought and emotional. You're clutching pearls and wringing hands over "international law" just like the emotionally bereft communists who just lost one of their Sainted paragons to the cold grip of realpolitik. Instead of even attempting to refute my arguments, you immediately resorted to calling me a neocon and trying to force me to defend positions I never expressed because it was the only thing you could think of saying that might derail me. For someone who claims to be calm, you argue like a woman making shit up just because she's in the mood for a fight.
As for my response, I have ruffled plenty of feathers on this board by calling people stupud when I think they've being stupid. Even when we disagree, that doesn't normally include you. Today it does.
Calm down
Over the course of this conversation, you have accused me of saying at least a dozen things I never said, of supporting wars you will find plenty of evidence in my comment history of me openly condemning, told me that I'm a pathetic bootlicker, and hurled half a dozen other schoolyard insults at me, and then you tell me to calm down.
No Tony. You calm down.
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.
I never supported Iraq, Vietnam or Afghanistan you hysterical lunatic. Nor am I presently supporting any wars because there aren't any. The interventions you're hand-wringing about are already over.
4% of China's imports according to China's official figures, which are always bullshit.
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.
If Trump wants to come into Ottawa in the middle of the night and yoink Carney, I'd be okay with that.
Stop comparing this to Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam. It is nothing like any of those, and to say it is is delusional. You had exactly this same meltdown when Trump attacked Syria, and exactly the same meltdown when he did it to Iran, and both of those were over and done before you stopped frothing at the mouth about them. You're the one who's having trouble admitting you were wrong. You were wrong then, and you're still wrong.
I think the message this sends is Trump's way of forcing the problem to solve itself, and not just in Venezuela.
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.
The military intervention in Venezuela is already finished. There are still US Naval assets in the ocean outside Venezuelan waters, but no US boots on the ground in the country. All the morons making the argument that this is another Iraq or Vietnam have rotten brains leaking out of their ears.
If other Latin American leaders take this as a queue to get closer to China, Trump can and will do the same thing to them. That was the whole point of this operation: it was a warning shot. He may not be able or even need to engage in full-scale military intervention to effect "regime change," but he can absolutely make sure that the individual leaders know there will be personal consequences for them. Maduro knew he was being targeted. He beefed up his security. He dared Trump to go get him. He let with Chinese envoys hours before he was taken. It didn't save him.
This action was governed by the only international law that has ever applied: might makes right. The liberal rules-based order was only ever in place for as long as the US chose to enforce it, and all the while American leaders let China, Russia and every other rival routinely break those laws without retaliating. And now everyone knows they won't anymore.
Chinese and Xi specifically "invested" in Venezuela
80% of Venezuela's oil exports were going to China
Couple that with the Chinese government and all of their mouthpieces whining about Maduro's capture. Venezuela was the biggest recipient of belt-and-road initiative funding in Latin America: that program has always been about Chinese influence peddling in the second and third world.
Yes, Maduro was also a major narcotrafficker, and a Communist who impoverished a country that should be one of the richest in the world, but all three of these things are of secondary importance to the message this sends to the leader of every country in the US's backyard: I can yank out out of your bed in the middle of the night and there is nothing you can do about it.
The Chinese had fully bought and paid for the Maduro regime, and were building up their military with Venezuelan oil. Regardless of what other benefits this action may or may not have, securing that resource as a US asset and denying the Chinese access to it is more than enough justification.
Every leader in the American sphere of influence just woke up with a knife next to their pillow. Trump has just sent a message that he doesn't need to bog down his military in a decades-long "intervention" in order to get rid of people who fuck around. Maduro dared the US to go get him, so Trump did. In the middle of the night, they killed his bodyguards, yoinked him and his wide out of the country and just for good measure, cremated Hugo Chavez to send a message.
Because it was about defending the virtuous and free nations of the West from invasion and conquest by the swarthy races of the east, whose savagery was easily corrupted to serve a greater evil?
Synthetic DNA is already a thing. No reason AI couldn't fool that test too.
It's probably already done. He's been replaced by a Somali imposter in whiteface. They wouldn't even need to change the shape of his head.
Look at me. I'm the governor now.
International law only ever existed for as long as the United States was willing to enforce it.
Trump has rightly made the decision that if every other major power (China, Russia, etc) is going to routinely violate the rules-based international order and deal in realpolitik while the West alone tries to follow the rules, then our enemies will be emboldened to keep fucking around in the confidence that they'll never have to find out. So now we're back to a might-makes-right world, and the liberal establishment is having a meltdown about it.
As much as I can't abide Matt Walsh, he isn't wrong here.
Even if Walz does end up in prison, the D will make sure his family is taken care of, just so he keeps his mouth shut. I'm sure this investigation, even if the DOJ does its due diligence for once, will only find the tip of the iceberg Walz could implicate if he decided to cooperate.
I'm sorry to hear that, man. Genuinely, thanks for the five years of work you've put in.
Back in 2016, Candace Owens ran a TDS-fueled blog where she routinely made typical lefty brainrot comments about Trump's dick size and similar nonsense, and also routinely encouraged her audience to send her any personal information they were able to dig up about conservative influencers. Then she magically had a change of heart overnight.
She is a fed, married to a European aristocrat with his money and privilege pillowed up under her while she uses her platform to undermine the credibility and cohesion of rightist movements. She is an establishment plant whose entire purpose is to derail and disrupt actual useful dialogue on the right.
If that's the argument you've seen me make, then something about this action seems to have made you so unreasonably angry that you can't read or think clearly. I'll talk to you more whe you've got your head in straight.