One can’t help but note that the dictators America will choose to sanction, but not actually do anything else about, seem to be more about whether they criticize America than what they actually do.
… what exactly do you think sanctions are for, if not as a tool to apply pressure to our enemies?
You… you do realize that there are other options for applying pressure to cooperative countries, right?
And, of course, there were the coups. But, obviously, despite all of history, America had nothing to do with them… After all, we investigated ourselves, and found no wrongdoing. Or anything that is “against policy,” anyways.
None of which is relevant to whether imposing the sanctions, lifting the sanctions, or letting the sanctions go back down after reneging on an agreement to hold free and fair elections is the correct choice.
Yes, we should have let the sanctions lapse, because all they do is hurt actual Venezuelans while emboldening Maduro’s faction.
Oh, so sanctions on the largest source of government income for a dictatorship doesn’t do anything except hurt actual Venezuelans? Here I thought that maybe an authoritarian regime having FEWER resources might have some effect on them, but clearly I was wrong. I guess I can rescind my position on aid to Israel too, since removing resources from the Israeli government has no effect either, except hurting normal Israelis.
Yes, not starving people is moral. I know, that’s a tough one, isn’t? Maybe if we starve a million more we’ll do a regime change?
Believe it or not, I happen to think that NOT giving authoritarian regimes money to beat the teeth out of innocent people’s skulls is actually the moral option here. But apparently, America’s money belongs to everyone except America - we aren’t allowed to decide not to fund dictatorships. That would be, what was it? Intervention?
Fascism, or red fascism, is not weakened with the existence of someone they can conveniently blame all of their problems on. Especially when it’s not entirely a lie.
Ah, yes, that’s why it was so important in the late 30s to appease fascist governments and repeatedly reassure them that we wouldn’t let any mean, nasty government retaliation or boycotts effect them. Otherwise we would have just strengthening those authoritarian governments!
We called that very successful policy ‘appeasement’, and it was what caused Zionist ships to raise the fucking swastika in the mid-30s. It was very effective, and that’s why absolutely nothing happened in the late 30s or in the 40s.