I don’t care about Maduro, as far as I’m concerned, they can shoot him if they want. What matters to me is walking through the streets of my city and seeing the faces of fear on my neighbors. The military patrolling to prevent looting due to panic. It’s a collective hangover, a horrible one.

It’s 2016 all over again. It’s seeing despair entering the circulatory system of all Venezuelans, only now it’s more sudden, and we are painfully aware of it.

This is far from improving, and we know it.

  • theparadox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    15 days ago

    This is what has been cooking since 9/11/2001.

    The AUMF grants the president the ability to just do military shit if it is in defense against “terrorism”.

    Since its passage in 2001, U.S. presidents have interpreted their authority under the AUMF to extend beyond al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan to apply to numerous other groups as well as other geographic locales, due to the act’s omission of any specific area of operations. The adoption of this law does not require the targets to be state actors, but can include non-state actors, such as individual persons. In December 2016, the Office of the President published a brief interpreting the AUMF as providing congressional authorization for the use of force against al-Qaeda and other militant groups.Today, the full list of actors the U.S. military is fighting or believes itself authorized to fight under the 2001 AUMF is classified.

    It should have been updated and repealed before G. W. Bush left office but it was left on the table and every president has used it.

    During his first term, the Trump administration officially accused Maduro with “Narco Terrorism”. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the plan all along. It’s a stretch, for sure, but all that seems to matter to the GOP is having some speck of legal cover and the corrupt SCOTUS does the rest.