The Venezuelans seem to celebrating this morning and not a lot civilian deaths seem to be reported . This is a huge win for the U . S and the world too. Why is everyone against this ? Also why is everyone saying we are going to start a war , when this ended in 3 hours ? To be a war , the other country has to have a fighting military which they don’t .

First things first: the stunningly audacious raid that extracted Nicolás Maduro and his wife from Venezuela is a genuinely history-making victory for Donald Trump. At a cost of zero American lives, the United States captured a singularly destructive force: a dictator whose record of criminality and misrule blighted millions of Venezuelan lives and destabilized politics in the entire Western hemisphere.

After clumsily stealing an election he had plainly lost by a landslide eighteen months ago, Nicolás Maduro kept running the Venezuelan state as a sprawling criminal syndicate. Along with his powerbroker wife, Cilia Flores, he belongs in a prison cell as surely as anyone I can think of. Which is why you’ll be hard pressed to find a Venezuelan who doesn’t, on some level, rejoice at last night’s news.

In the weeks leading up to this history-making raid, I more than once rolled my eyes at reports that the United States might be planning an extraction operation to effectively kidnap a sitting president. The idea seemed just fantastical and theatrical, not to say harebrained. Well, they did it, and anyone who tells you they’re not at least a little bit impressed by the feat is probably lying.

Venezuelans today are waking up to an unrecognizable country. Like every dictatorship, Maduro’s had invested heavily in the myth of its own invincibility. And yet the regime is very much still in place, albeit in a weird, decapitated state. State TV is still running regime propaganda, Vice President (soon, one surmises, to shed the “vice”) Delcy Rodríguez is still fulminating on behalf of the Venezuelan government, the hardline interior minister Diosdado Cabello is still giving fire-breathing speeches condemning American aggression, Maduro’s notoriously repressive attorney general, Tarek William Saab, is still out mining the night’s events for propaganda points. The entire ghastly apparatus of state repression that Hugo Chávez built and Nicolás Maduro perfected appears, for now, to be fully in control of the country.

Maduro is gone. It’s tempting to think that, without him, the regime will implode. But Maduro’s was never the kind of personalist system that depends on a single leader. It was always more of a team effort, with a constellation of influential figures like Rodríguez and Cabello teaming up with Cuban intelligence to keep dissent at bay. In other words, the kind of regime that could very well survive decapitation. And if it does, Venezuelans will get the worst of it.

For three decades, the most trustworthy principle for interpreting Venezuelan affairs has been a simple heuristic: whatever outcome makes Venezuelans’ lives most miserable is always to be treated as the odds-on-favorite. If, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio apparently told Senator Mike Lee, the United States really isn’t planning any follow-on actions against the rump regime, then for Venezuelans on the ground nothing may change. Things could get even worse: you can easily imagine a wounded and humiliated Chavista successor ratcheting up state repression to rebuild the regime’s now tattered aura of invincibility.

Maduro’s abduction could easily become an all-purpose excuse to crack down on any and every sign of dissent: any expression of dissatisfaction will surely be used as evidence of connivance with the American enemy. Trump’s stunning one-day win could be remembered for heralding an even darker stage in Venezuela’s path towards totalitarianism.

At the same time, as the post-9/11 era showed, if the United States did attempt to install a democratic government, that too could go wrong in a million ways. This is not to mention the fact that the operation was carried out illegally, with no Congressional authorization, and that the precedent of superpowers deciding which foreign leaders to capture may not always lead to the downfall of people as evil as Maduro.

All through this latest round of American pressure, the specter of half-measures has loomed large over Venezuela’s future. The Bolivarian regime is always at its most vicious when it feels most threatened, and, right now, it must feel enormously threatened. Time and again, when the regime feels threatened, it’s ordinary Venezuelans who pay the price.

Donald Trump and Marco Rubio will take a victory lap today. They deserve it. They’ve struck an enormous blow against a genuinely evil regime. But they’ve not overthrown it. Chavismo is very much still in control of Venezuela. Bloodied, weakened, humiliated, yes, but still in control, and newly motivated to exert even more state terror in a bid to stay in power.

Venezuelans all around the world are celebrating the fall of a vicious tyrant. But if the regime manages to ride out this storm, we won’t be celebrating for long.

The abduction of Maduro doesn’t achieve anything by itself, so we're yet to see:

• whether it will result in a democratic revolution in Venezuela or conversely in a strengthening of the Venezuelan dictatorship;

• and whether the shift of Venezuela’s politics will be beneficial or harmful to the US, its allies, and its adversaries;

But Trump’s arbitrary-whimsical lawless actions already certainly:

• united previously rather neutral to the USA South American and other countries against the now perceived as a threat United States, meaning they will try to obtain nukes and avoid strengthening the US, consequently may prioritize cooperation and trade with Russia and China instead of the USA;

• made the US allies wary of the US, meaning they will try to obtain nukes and avoid strengthening the US, consequently may prioritize cooperation and trade among themselves over the USA;

• provided diplomatic and propagandistic excuses for China, Russia, and other the US adversaries to lawlessly invade other countries without the UN approval similarly to the USA, so if China invades Taiwan, or Russia invades even more of its neighbors, Chinese and Russians will always have an excuse: "The USA did it, so why can’t we?" with the only difference that unlike utterly incompetent Trump China and Russia may actually gain something from their military operations;

Meaning the US has already paid and will continue to pay substantially for decades to come for this Trump’s lawless careless recklessness, but whether this current Trump’s costly gigantic failure will bring any positive consequences we’re yet to see.

Also, the increasing lawlessness of the US military is an increasingly gigantic threat to the US democracy — either Americans swiftly end the US dictatorship politically via elections and implement the institutional preventive measures-mechanisms-procedures or the probability of lawless abuse of the US military against the US population to cement the US dictatorship will continue to grow steadily, increasing the risk of America following the descending trajectory of many other former democracies, including Venezuela under Maduro or Germany under Hitler. … :(

To be clear - I am absolutely appalled and disgusted by the U.S.A.’s blatant invasion of Venezuela and abduction of its leader and his wife in the pursuit of controlling Venezuelan oil, which is not only immoral but also violates international law - although America is no stranger to doing this. However, while I am aware of the longstanding sanctions imposed on Venezuela by both the U.S.A. and EU and that Maduro is not recognised as President of Venezuela by the majority of the Western world, I wanted to hear a socialist perspective on him as a leader, since I am aware that a lot of what information is shared about the Global South is mired by Western propaganda. So what is the general consensus on Maduro in the socialist world, and how he led Venezuela as president?

The Vice President affirms that Nicolás Maduro is Venezuela’s only president, despite his capture and Trump’s claims that US will “run” the country and the more sinister US claims that Delcy Rodriguez was “sworn in” as President and was "willing to do what we (the US) think is necessary to make Venezuela great again."

Maduro is the corrupt, illegitimate head of a authoritarian government that likely works directly with drug cartels to supply the world with illegal drugs. The world agrees that he lost the last election, and remains in power due to an unwillingness to allow a peaceful turnover. The citizens are oppressed and suffer from a damaged economy and political turmoil.

All that can be true, AND that is not our reason for his kidnapping. He is not a great guy. However, Venezuela is surrounded by countries that are also shrouded in drug trade, with leaders that are not 'great guys'. Columbia right next door is still the world's largest producer of illegal drugs. They get repeatedly sanctioned for backsliding on democracy, and their anti-drug efforts are perfunctory and mostly for show. da Silva of Brazil was previously arrested for corruption, and is back in power again. Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, etc all share very similar situations.

And if we go wider, we only need look at countries like Russia and China for leaders that were not legitimately chosen by the people, and are guilty of transgressions against the US.

However, we chose to intercede in Venezuela. The difference between Venezuela and the rest is Venezuela sits on possibly the largest oil reserve in the world. The impetus of this invasion, like Iraq, is purely for oil. And like Iraq, the public justification is nothing but disguise. Change my view.

Starter: After the kindnapping(?) of Venezuela’s president, Madura, the country was in celebration as the dictator and alleged drug dealer was out of office and now the people were finally free and could start making their country better for everyone. Well in theory, in actuality Maduro’s old regime was still in place, including the person who’s running the country now,at least on paper, the former VP for Maduro. This has lead to a huge crackdown by the government, with people being arrested for supporting the US actions. Also, many citizens are being forced to protest to release Maduro. If there’s one lesson we should take away from all this is, don’t celebrate too early.

ALL POSTS ABOUT THE INVASION ARE LOCKED. KEEP ALL DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THIS TOPIC TO MEGATHREADS!

Early on Saturday, explosions were heard and aircraft was spotted in Caracas, Venezuela's capital. This happens after months of allegations that Venezuela has turned into a narco state. It is the first invasion by the US on Latin America since 1989.

According to the US, they have successfully captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and they have been flown out of the country. Venezuelans leaders have not confirmed or denied this fact.

Source: Reuters

We expect more information in the coming hours regarding this conflict between US and Venezuela. I have to leave soon, so if any mod reads this, feel free to start a 2nd Megathread later. Otherwise, I'll keep updating this megathread later today.

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