[radu_floricica]

It's probably just the disconnect between the two sides of american politics. On the right it's justified enough, on the left it doesn't matter what Trump says, the reaction is going to be exactly the same.

For example I'm not american and mostly on the right, and I think it's doubtful if it's legally justified (how does one legally justify a was anyways? it's extra-judicial almost by definition), but it makes a lot of sense, it aligns with realpolitik and it's morally good for several independent reasons. In particular it has a hugely disproportionate geopolitical impact, and less importantly it can bring a few million people from under a dictatorship.

As an interesting aside, I recently did a quick research on the Grenada invasion, widely spoken of as an embarrassing moment. It went... very well. They came, remove a budding dictatorship right after a coup, left in two months, and Grenada had no ill effects in the years after (both by subjective reporting, and by GDP per capita comparable to neighboring countries). The alternative would have been "do nothing", skip the reputational hit and have yet another hellhole in the region. The number of dictatorships that did well in recent history is exactly two, and neither was socialist (SK and Singapore).

[foldr]

> how does one legally justify a was anyways

I see we’re now living in a world where many people genuinely don’t even remember the answer to this question.

Roughly, you can legally justify a war if (i) it’s in self defense or (ii) you get a UN Security Council resolution. That’s why GWB tried to get a security council resolution before going into Iraq, as the case for self defense was pretty shaky.

Is it common for actual wars to meet these legal requirements? No. But that’s just because wars are something that generally shouldn’t happen. It’s also not common for murders to meet the requirements on justifiable homicide.

Some of the discussion of the legality of the US invasion of Panama is relevant here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...

[big-and-small]

> The alternative would have been "do nothing", skip the reputational hit and have yet another hellhole in the region.

This. Your logic could at least make sense with other US president, but not wanna-be dictator one doing lip service for all the authoritarians and dictators in the world. Not a good fit to fight for democracy.

[lostlogin]

> doing lip service for all the authoritarians and dictators

It’s more than lip service.

[7952]

War can only be justified after the fact as a result of good outcomes. The decision prior is always a roll of the dice that loads the thrower with infinite responsibility.

[amunozo]

You say that as if the reason is that Venezuela is a dictatorship. I despise Maduro but this break of international rules is everything but morally good. It opens a world of brute force and lack of international rules. It is only "morally good" in the short term. In the medium-long, it's morally horrible and terrifying.

[stavros]

My country is not a fan of Trump, is it morally right to send a bunch of covert soldiers to capture him and throw him out of the country? We'd be saving the US from a dictatorship.

[aqme28]

> how does one legally justify a was anyways? it's extra-judicial almost by definition

What? There's a process for initiating an offensive war in the US and they didn't follow it. Legally, Congress must authorize it. Though that hasn't been followed for quite a few wars now.

[radu_floricica]

Isolated demand for rigor. When is the last time Congress did that?

[ahtihn]

Why isolated? There's people demanding it every single time it happened.

Just because it's ignored every time doesn't make this time okay.

[UncleMeat]

They've largely all been illegal.

But we did have an AUMF for the absolute disasters that were the afghanistan and iraq wars. Somebody who isn't american coming in and saying "whatever, fuck it, Trump just does what he wants" is terrifying to me.

Trump would prefer it if I were killed. Should I be shot?

[flyinglizard]

The president is legally able to authorize an offensive action though. Maybe not an "all out war" like Vietnam but what's happening in Venezuela is entirely legal from the US standpoint.

[embedding-shape]

Ah, US is doing a little special operation I suppose, inside another sovereign nation, and this of course shouldn't be considered an invasion.

[jonway]

Maybe? I don’t know there is an Authorization of Use of Force, and we’ve been conducting turkey shoots on civilian craft for lik 3 months now.

Seems on “Illegal” side of things, for whatever that matters in ‘26 huh?

[NalNezumi]

>It's probably just the disconnect between the two sides of american politics. On the right it's justified enough, on the left it doesn't matter what Trump says, the reaction is going to be exactly the same. For example I'm not american and mostly on the right

Ah a textbook case of outgroup homogeneity bias. [1] Your follow up comment about Bernie and AOC is icing on the cake.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity