Vice President Joe Biden was busy being good natured Old Uncle Joe in the debate. He spent much of his time trying to keep young Rep. Paul Ryan from talking. You know Uncle Joe. He's always interrupting everyone at the family gatherings. He wants to remind everyone his mouth still works even though he might be moving kind of slow. He smiles a lot to show he's enjoying the attention.

One of the problems some of us old guys have is wanting to remain the center of attention. I believe a lot of this practice comes from fear of being displaced by the younger guys. We want to remind the younger generation we are still around.

I don't expect much substance from the debate because two minutes per question is insufficient time to do much more than to allow the two parties to say "did so" / "did not" much like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck saying "duck season" / "rabbit season" in the old Warner Brothers Looney Tunes.

Biden is out of touch with the situation in the Middle East. He seems to think we are winning in spite of the fact that al Qaeda recently destroyed our consulate in Libya.

Biden doesn't understand that withdrawal from Afghanistan will be portrayed by al Qaeda as victory over the United States like their victory over the old Soviet Union. Osama bin Laden wanted us to invade Afghanistan because he believed the United States didn't have the willingness to go the distance.

He knew he couldn't defeat the United States. He believed he, or his successor, could get the United States to tire of the war and leave our allies behind without support like the Soviets did and like we did in Vietnam. The recent attacks on American forces by local Afghan forces are because they think the Americans are deserting them like bin Laden said we would. Afghan forces believe if we withdraw our troops we will eventually end support in the form of providing war supplies like we did in Vietnam. Many Afghans may believe the situation will be like the conflict with the Soviet Union when the Taliban took advantage of the chaos that followed the Soviet withdrawal to take over the country.

The War on Terror is an endurance contest like the Cold War was. The United States has to continue the effort if it wants to outlast the enemy. We still have forces in Germany even though we won that war almost 70 years ago. and we have had casualties there because of terrorist activity. We need to let the enemy know we will keep forces in Afghanistan for a similar period of time if we want to outlast them. Al Qaeda will use early withdrawal as a recruiting tool by claiming they have proved they can defeat the United States with terrorism.