The Future President, Donald Trump

Not the way I remember it. Bin Laden had been operating terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in a loose alliance with the Taliban. The point is that if someone attacks your country and kills thousands, very few people would say that you haven't got the right to strike back.

Prove your claim about liberals.

I guess you believe the NIST report as well??

All the identified hijackers were Saudi nationals, so you may be right.

You mean the report that is based on facts and science?

Might as well get used to it. It looks like Mr. Trump really is going to be our next president.

Looks like to you that Trump is the next president, but there are many more states and voters beyond the few states on the east coast.

You're just getting used to the idea that he'll be the Republican nominee and hoping that you don't lose to a Democrat but it's really hard to predict how he'd fare in general election right now (given that he's defied much prediction so far).

I don't think it makes much sense to play up these parts. It was a not a demand that would have precluded the war and it didn't quite play out that way. And the Taliban were not giving them much support it was the other way around. He showed up and offered money to be allowed to be in the country (after only just recently becoming persona non grata other countries). They were not co-conspirators in 9/11 and were pretty much just guilty of being a tribal country willing to have another small militia within its borders.

They did not say no to the demand to turn Osama over either, they asked for evidence that he was behind it but we were already moving to invade and weren't really going to not occupy the country if they had handed him over. In any case Osama wasn't turning himself over to the Taliban either



I don't have much qualm with toppling the Taliban regime, they were illegitimate and horrific (what with the sharia law and all). But that doesn't quite constitute "strike back". Like roger points out they weren't the ones responsible, they merely had a group operating out of their territory (which has always been and still is a place where no authority has been able to drive out all the various militias that operate).

We probably could have eliminated the threat of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan without invading Afghanistan but a surgical response was not going to be politically palatable.

This ended up meaning we had to spend a lot more time on the occupation than we should have and wasted a ton more time there than we needed and I wish we got out faster than that but I guess if you decide to break it you buy it and on the plus side the Taliban were overthrown.

But the sanctuary was already gone as soon as 9/11 happened. They had to scramble for caves and borders and strategically we could also have accomplished the goal of defeating Al Qaeda without also taking on the Taliban if we wanted and if the public would accept the subdued optics.

In general the main criticism to the invasion of Afghanistan are matters of scale and how the war was prosecuted. Whether or not we have the right to do it is one thing but whether or not all the things we decided to do were worth deciding is another (we were definitely too optimistic about wanting to completely exterminate the Taliban and held onto that attempt for too long).

I am 100% confident that the Republican nominee (no matter who it is) will win the election. The 2013 gun control debacle essentially wrecked Mr. Obama's second term, and that wrecked second term will make an easy win for the Republicans.

But yes, I'm just getting used to the idea. I didn't realize until tonight that Trump was going to be the nominee.

I think you are reading the country wrong on the gun issue, it is not going to be a bigger wedge than before, it will be less of a wedge. I predict that the USA will gradually become less, not more, resistant to gun control over the next decades.

I also don't see it as a more powerful a political bludgeon than usual this year. In every election a Republican platform plank is that they are on your side of the gun control debate and it didn't win you the last elections and is not guaranteed to win you this one either.

You are right about Afghanstan, but the two idiots Bush and Chaney thought Afghanastan was well in hand and decided to enlarge the war into Iraq in order to keep the war machine going on a bunch of lies. Chaney made a bundle on the wars. They ceeded both countries to the terriosts with their stupidity.

Bush and Chaney were liberals?

I'm not saying that voters will base their votes on the gun issue. I'm saying that Mr. Obama's wrecked second term will be what gives the election to the Republicans.

Mr. Obama wasted all of his second-term political capital attacking the NRA, and as a consequence didn't manage to achieve anything in his second term beyond a few things that the Republicans wanted even more than he did.

Come election day it'll have been a long six years since Mr. Obama's last legislative victory. That's what is going to hand the election to the Republicans on a platter.

Gotcha, I understand your position better now but still don't think it's accurate. I do think that the political logjam is a big issue this election but don't think voters are going to pin that on any one party.

Instead they seem to be shunning "establishment" candidates a bit more than usual. It gives wind to candidates like Sanders and Trump but isn't guaranteed to take any of them to the top.

There is palpable frustration with the logjam but it's spread around enough that the candidates who preach revolution or that they are outsiders are not guaranteed to win. They are definitely shaking things up but it remains to be seen how strong this wind will be and more importantly which direction it will blow.

I think it's going to be a long term issue that will not change much with a new president.

Nothing is more "establishment" than the party that currently controls the White House.

There's a reason for that: voters made the choice.

There's definitely truth to the notion that the incumbent suffers in such a logjam, but I think enough people blame the Republicans for their inordinate obstructionism that this is nearly a wash. But I could be wrong, it could still break either way.

The delegate count for the dems is CLinton 390+ and Sanders 40+. (Including SUPERDELEGATES)

Whats the GOP count?