Thomas Mott Osborne: “there seem to be three major topics which will be determining factors in this fall's elections, and these are: the…”

“there seem to be three major topics which will be determining factors in this fall's elections, and these are: the conflict in the Middle East, the economy, and values in cultural issues. I will attempt tonight to discuss each one of these areas, hopefully in a somewhat accurate, factual, and dispassionate manner. I will start with the situation in the Middle East. One thing that we often notice as we watch the nightly news is relatively little discussion of Afghanistan; and by almost any measure, Afghanistan has been a major success. The Taliban has been removed from power, the Soviet Union left Afghanistan after several years of war, unable to conquer the Taliban; and we took them out in a matter of weeks with a loss of roughly 100 troops. The terrorist training camps have been destroyed. Terrorist funding in Afghanistan has been largely disrupted, and the terrorist leadership has been rendered largely ineffective throughout that whole country, which is roughly the size of Texas. The country is reasonably stable and has been stabilized with a very small coalition force of approximately 15,000 troops, again in a country the size of Texas. This is a remarkable achievement. The Loyal Jurga, the constitutional convention, has been accomplished. Even with all of the rival warlords and tribal factions, they did come up with a constitution that is pro-democracy and seems to represent all factions within the country. So it was a remarkable achievement.”