If Ms. Machado truly wants to change Venezuela peacefully, why is she asking the United States to overthrow Maduro?
The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado supports the use of force to overthrow her country’s government.
But Machado’s peace prize has been highly contentious. She dedicated it to President Trump, who has amassed U.S. warships in the Caribbean, killing at least 87 people in boats in strikes that critics say amount to war crimes. Officials in the Trump administration privately say their ultimate goal is to bring about regime change in Venezuela. Machado has expressed support for using force to oust Maduro.
She’s not the first Nobel laureate to attract controversy. But the reaction this year has been quite intense.
On Tuesday, protesters waved signs that read “No Peace Prize for Warmongers” outside the Nobel Institute. And yesterday, the Norwegian Peace Council — a group of 19 organizations promoting disarmament and conflict resolution — declined to hold its traditional torchlight procession to honor the laureate, saying Machado does not align with its “core values.”
The award has raised questions about the prize and its goals: If a politician actively calling for military intervention can win the Nobel Peace Prize, what is the prize for?
If Ms. Machado wants to use force, then let her ask the United States for weapons so that the Venezuelans risk their lives, not those of America’s young men and women. We gave the Afganisitans weapons, and they chased the Russians out, so let Ms Machado and her followers do likewise.
Marco Rubio and Cuba
Since the Cubans fled from Cuba, I have always maintained that they should have stayed and fought to change things. If they don’t care enough to fight for their country, why should they want others to do it for them? Mexico had its revolution (Civil War), and some fled to the United States, but most stayed there. Mexico lost more lives during its revolution than the United States did during its Civil War.
Mexico lost significantly more lives in its major internal conflict, the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), than the U.S. did in its Civil War (1861-1865), with estimates of 1.5 to 2.5 million Mexican deaths versus around 600,000 to 1 million combined U.S. and Confederate deaths, representing a much larger percentage of Mexico’s population at the time.
Nearly seven years later, Mr. Maduro is still in power. Mr. Rubio, now Mr. Trump’s secretary of state and interim national security adviser, is a primary architect of an escalating military pressure campaign against Venezuela. And while pushing out Mr. Maduro appears to be one immediate goal of U.S. policy, doing so could help fulfill another decades-long dream of Mr. Rubio’s: dealing a critical blow to Cuba.
Mr. Rubio, if you want regime change in Cuba, then do it the right way, with you willing to sacrifice your life and take the fight to Cuba.