> Most people from Venezuela are happy Maduro is out.
Based on what? There's a poll already about the US bombing Venezuela and kidnapping Maduro? There's a big difference between removing a leader through a legitimate domestic process and this.
What legitimate domestic process are you envisioning? He lost an election and stayed in power anyway. Any domestic process to remove him would look like a coup.
If there was drug trafficking, why has the administration failed to provide any evidence of it on the many boats they've destroyed and the many lives they've taken for it? Instead, the limited evidence we have points at the boats being entirely unrelated to drug trafficking.
If the administration had evidence, it would be in its best interest to have shared it already. Instead they keep on pushing points they can barely articulate and that conflict with known information.
They indicted Maduro and his cronies in 2020, before anything with the boats. And the "why" might be that there is no standard that a government needs to release the information they make decisions on. In fact, it's more standard to not release it under the guide of "sources and methods". In any case, are the boats even related to Maduro or just some other thing?
> Not in itself, but the trafficking of drugs into the US is a US issue.
They are already backtracking on the "Cartel de los Soles" accusation, after finally realizing there's no such organization, but it was always a slang frase about corruption in the military. Maduro cannot possibly lead an organization that doesn't exist. Source: NYT.
The indictment removed almost all of the mentions of this cartel, now phrasing the accusation in much broader, vague terms.
It wouldn't surprise me if at some stage they changed tack entirely and tried a different angle than drug trafficking, since, let's face it:
We did. And if he was successful, and then started threatening Canada, I think I'd be totally fine with Canada performing a special operation and taking him to stand trial.
And if that doesn't work? You could, for example, envision a situation where 10% of the people are well treated and armed by the government. It'd be very hard for an unarmed ill-treated 90% to conduct any kind of uprising if the government was sufficiently well organized and brutal.
The word “exiled” implies these people were forced out by the Maduro regime, which is not the case; virtually all of them left the country due to deteriorating economic conditions.
Venezuelans for the past 5+ years have been the most or almost the most numerous asylum seekers in the US. And "poor economic conditions" or general poverty is not a valid reason to claim asylum
> Venezuelans for the past 5+ years have been the most or almost the most numerous asylum seekers in the US.
That by itself does not demonstrate that the majority have been exiled, even if we want to expand the definition of "exile" to be inclusive of those who were not actually forced to leave, but felt it was necessary to leave due to political persecution.
The majority of Venezuelans will never have a legal option to reside in the United States. This incentivizes Venezuelans to make asylum claims in order to gain entry. Similar abuses of the asylum process are seen at far smaller scales in Canada and the European Union.
What sort of persecution are these people claiming to have experienced, and more specifically, what rights are they alleging to have been deprived of by the Maduro regime?
Please, educate yourself on Maduro and the people of Venezuela. It would be hard to find a less popular leader. A quarter of Venezuelans have fled the country under his regime. 82% of Venezuelans are living in poverty and he has presided over hyperinflation. Exit polls showed him losing the last election in a landslide and he stole the country anyway.
Well the videos of ~200,000 Venezuelan people partying in the capitol of Argentina is a start. As well as many other pictures and videos of gatherings wherever there is significant Venezuelan refugees.
My question wasn't about whether he was popular, it was about whether people approve of this specific military action by the US. People can hate their leaders and still not want a foreign country directly replacing them.
In this case you are just objectively wrong. Venezuelans are thrilled with this military action. They are happy they don't have to die by the millions to oust their dictator. For many, this was the best-case scenario (assuming democratic elections are held at some point in the future.)
Based on what? There's a poll already about the US bombing Venezuela and kidnapping Maduro? There's a big difference between removing a leader through a legitimate domestic process and this.