The Awesome Obama Thread II

Yes, I am disappointed in the way things have gone. However, overall, I think Obama has done a pretty good job given the circumstance.He has made one big "mistake." That "mistake" was to be born chocolate, rather than vanilla.Dubya "won" the 2000 election in a rather dubious manner. Some say that he won 5-4. Even though the election was questionable, I accepted dubya as president. There are millions of Americans who refuse to accept that Obama is their president, for the simple reason that he is black. Racism runs very deep in American veins.On paper, the US Government is a system with a weak executive, strong legislature. In practice, it has usually been one of a strong presidency. But the strength of the presidency comes from the use of the bully pulpit. When a large number of Americans refuse to accept Obama as president, purely because they are racists, the bully pulpit loses much of its effectiveness.So what if Hillary had won the last election? Well, sorry to say, but sexism runs almost as deeply as racism.I expect to be voting for another Obama term.

Obama was always a pragmatist. Sure, he had to campaign for the votes of the idealists. But to those of us paying attention, it was clear all along that he was a pragmatist.

Let me see if I have this straight.

• the judge received this in a communication;
• the judge then sent that out to others;
• the judge is somehow surprised that people who received it from him would also send it out to others.

No, he does not sway me. I can't speak for the others you mention.I just happen to have a view that is somewhat similar to that of crashfrog. Perhaps I was looking at the same evidence. On the other hand, I disagreed with our invasion of Afghanistan. I would have supported a quick raid on terrorist camps. But a full invasion, while perhaps morally justified, was foolish.

What's to elaborate? It should have been obvious all along, that we cannot solve the problems of Afghanistan. Only the Afghan people can do that.

Then that's not too different from my position. Yes, there was some justification for going in. But it was foolish to allow ourselves to get bogged down.

Meanwhile, the good old USA not only gave harbor to members of bin Laden's team, it also trained them in how to fly those aircraft.

For that, we should have gone in, attacked them, then got out. It should have been over in a few days, or a month at most.

You are ascribing intentions to the nation of Afghanistan, but you are unwilling to ascribe similar intentions to the USA.A more accurate assessment would be that there was no nation of Afghanistan, just a bunch of tribal groups.To be clear, I am not asserting that the USA aided and abetted bin Laden. I am saying that there is more evidence that USA did, than that Afghanistan did. And there is even more evidence that Pakistan is a terrorist state, even though we are counting them as allies.