CIA alone in the claim makes it oversimplified. but if he meant to stop meddling generally by "pull out the CIA" i tend to agree with him. I honestly think we're nearing the time for an embargo rather than continued occupation.

This made spit out my coffee Hahahha hahahh oh my god

well, it could also be that some young voters who normally are inclined to stay home were brought to the polls by Obama, who was an outstanding speaker and campaigner, and that clinton couldnt replicate this because she was just about the most uninspiring person to ever run for president. (might be a close race with Bob Dole though. )

so Obama maybe brought young, democratic-leaning but rather apolitical people to the polls, and thus expanded the democratic margin among young voters beyond levels normally seen. if that's the case, the 5% drop from 2012 to 2016 might have been a reversion to the mean.

on the other hand, the swing of 16-20% in the youth vote in key swing states cannot be explained by just this "obama-effect".

I agree in principle, but on the chess board of the world players like Russia and China, or Iran and Turkey, would probably take advantage with the absence of our grimy hands.

while I strongly dislike the Chinese i'd hand them off this quagmire in a heartbeat. From a military sales standpoint that's scary, but if we leave and they want to make them outposts they'll need a lot more than weapons shipments. And i dont think China is interested in expansion outside of Asia just yet. Russia might be scared to actually nationbuild in the middle east, they got fucked in Afghanistan. best case scenario is we leave and the OPEC wars have them begging for us to come back in a half century. we're there against their wishes, by-and-large, it would be nice to be invited.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Oct 18 2018 10:49am

the big geopolitical issue is europe's proximity to the middle east. if the NATO abandons the middle east, it will descent into perpetual war and chaos. IF, and only IF europe was able to stay unaffected by this chaos on its doorstep, then this might be a good strategy. but if it doesnt work, europe gets dragged down by the instability, and europe is still too important for the world economy to be sacrificable from an american point of view.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 18 2018 10:57am

i mean, kinda. it's not like we can honorably discharge half our military and send them home. we still need to do something with all those soldiers. bases in Turkey, Greece, etc seem like a good fit. We'll make out own iron curtain to contain the outbreak of violence and the migrants it eventually leads to.

Just build a wall