as an American I expected more. I am let down.
the trump administration, lacking any intellectual stamina, and resolved to use only force abducted the leader of a sovereign nation. Maduro of Venezuela. Resorting to brute force when reason, tact, grace and moderation might have stayed the hands of a more enlightened group.
a sham trial is likely to follow. Guilt is certain. Will he be found dead in jail?
from what I have read Maduro as leader was no saint but we’re Americans in a similar situation I think we would have new, extreme, and deeply unsettling worries if an overwhelmingly powerful and openly hostile nation, say China, abducted trump and put him on trial in their county..
previously, the American elite have maintained at least some grace by producing either a semi believable pretext (wmds in Iraq, communism in Vietnam), making semi effective efforts to conceal operations (contra), not just a bare greedy brutal show of force resource grab.
this action is not legal in or out of the United States. Countries ought to respect each others sovereignty. Internally the president should not have the power to effect such actions.
as a nation the United States may have the ability to seize the oil based energy resources of Venezuela but that does not mean that the USA should do so. IT does not make it right and it does not guarantee that there will be no repercussions.
it would be nice if we could realistically expect our leaders to avoid acting brutally Machiavellian.
the only pretext given prior to this dishonorable, illegal abduction is also worrying in its own right. That such a pathetic, laughably weak excuse of “drugs” was given shows the denial of reality going on in the trump administration. They may actually be drinking their own koolaid and think that the existence of smugglers in the Caribbean constitutes just cause to visit violence and disorder upon the people of the world. Such behavior only lowers the estimates the rest of the world makes of the USA – we have shown ourselves to be overconfident unpredictable, untrustworthy liars.
when the USA started murdering smugglers it seemed strange – like to what end? In the USA we have laws that are meant to prevent the police from simply murdering anyone they believe to have committed a crime but when the president starts just murdering people you start to wonder why the president doesn’t just murder any specific person anywhere who’s death (or absence of life) might be convenient for him.
but later the USA blockaded the Venezuelan ports, so perhaps the explanation was that trump was ineffectively, artlessly trying to goad or intimidate Maduro into starting the fight. And maybe when that didn’t happen it risked getting bad they just abducted him.
it deserves to be written that the world reaction has been more subdued than I expected. Perhaps folks are just shocked silent, but maybe no one cares to say out do anything. There was shock and anger from Columbia which shared a border with Venezuela and some anger from Cuba but that was mostly it…