The attack, capture, and pending criminal charges against Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro raise a question about fundamental Republican beliefs that have intensified under MAGA.
Republicans frequently attack the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, arguing that these institutions intrude on U.S. sovereignty. At the core of this belief is the idea that the only laws that should apply to a nation’s citizens are those enacted by their own government.
No one world government?
That argument unravels when the United States drafts and enforces laws that apply to people with no direct ties to the United States.
After being taken into custody by the U.S. military, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is now sitting in a jail cell in New York, facing a range of federal charges. Among the charges he faces are possession of illegal weapons. Not for nuclear missiles or chemical weapons, but for possessing machine guns.
(Missing from the indictment: Any mention of fentanyl, which has been the illegal substance at the center of the overdose epidemic.)
This is where “Republican Logic” collapses as it always does. Maduro was apprehended by U.S. Special Forces who were themselves armed with machine guns. Every military in the world possesses machine guns. The charge only makes sense if U.S. law is assumed to apply globally.
The United States asserts since once declared that Nicolas Maduro heads an international smuggling cartel, then out laws apply to him, the president of another nation.
(Also notably absent from the indictment, any mention of him having any ties to the Cartel of the Suns, which the U.S. alleged about him in 2020.)
Republicans who argue against international institutions imposing rules on the U.S. are now celebrating the extension of U.S. law to foreign citizens and even foreign heads of state.
Closing Remark
As is frequently the case in the Trump era, Republicans have once again shown that the principals they claimed to stand for are disposable as soon as they run counter to Donald Trump’s agenda. In recent years they have stepped back from a large number of policies that they used to claim to care deeply about, including:
- limited government
- balancing the federal budget
- supporting free trade
- fighting executive overreach
- “back the blue”
- demanding judicial independence
- supporting states rights
- championing family values
- protecting freedom of speech
- decrying cronyism and corruption
- pursuing child predators
Republicans have no any integrity left at all. There’s nothing else to say.
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