200 jobs last year, another 75 , is year, exported to india making them the crumpet capital of evening anderson. >> i am delighted it is taking on that label. >> it is an important week for british families. this week corporation tax is being cut it making our businesses stronger. 10,000 personal allowances are being introduced to make our families stronger. and we have the 2,000 pound employment allowance. we have three million people who have been taken taken out of income tax altogether. our economy is getting stronger, and everyone can see labor's arguments are getting weaker all the time. >> order. >> you have been watching questions questions from the british house of commons. "quesion time" airs live on

c-span 2 at 7:00 eastern and sunday night. watch any time at c-span.org. you can find past video of questions questions and other british public affairs programs. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] >> our joint services agreement, we are really active. in our myrtle beat station which did not have news. news is where you make your money in local market. that cost us $800,000. it is not cheap. it is not for the paint of heart. it is because it is what people wanted and needed to get them back to our station, channel 21 in myrtle beach. we put that back in place. without sinclair, without their financial support, i could not afford these figures. during an ice storm in south carolina, and ice just destroyed our generator.

>> there is no way to surthis without joint services agreements. >> this past monday the f.c.c. ruled that owners could not control more than one station in local markets. find out more monday on the communicators at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 2. >> next, a discussion about this weekend's alexeis in afghanistan. after that, a conversation on the financial brokering practice known as high frequency trading. at 11:00 p.m., "q & a" with arthur matt taibbi, talking about his book, "the divide."

>> next a discussion about the future of afghanistan and this weekend's presidential alexei. from "washington journal," this is 45 minutes. at c-span.org. michael e. o'hanlon is a seniors -- senior fellow at the brookings institute. us talk about the voting in afghanistan. it is gone smoothly. guest: it looks good. there is a long way to go. as you are aware, you have to get 50% of the vote in afghanistan to win. there will be a runoff almost for sure. ran.ate candidates who chances are nobody got more than 35 or 40%. there will have to be a runoff. whoever does not make the runoff will have to decide how they want to react to that. do they blame fraud? do they protest? there is a long way to go in the process.

it appears to have been a very good day. security forces protected the polling sites very well. the people show their bravery and defied the taliban. you have to celebrate the moment. host: this is an opinion piece the yuko wrote about the elections. what happened yesterday and how things will happen moving forward. you say each of the three candidates would be a plausible president or plausible first-round loser. each would be more comfortable -- vane west van karzai karzai. --than karzai. he had been the king of afghanistan's personal physician. well-known here.

he's to work in washington for the world bank. he was the finance minister and moved back after the fall of the taliban. they are all familiar with the west. even visitors like myself have had the chance to get to know all three of them. that part is promising. american forces to stay. they know they need help. they are less caught up in some of the back-and-forth that president karzai has had with the obama white house. they're going to have their challenges. a promisingit is top three. cnn is reporting a very heavy security presence. despite the threat by the taliban, that did not deter people from voting. the fingers were dipped in purple ink. we did see some of the violence

with the death of the photographer that was killed on friday. guest: there have been some high-profile assassinations in the weeks. they figured out that al qaeda did not get support when they bombed schools. of the taliban has gone after high profile legal targets. that is who they have wanted to strike at. they hope that would create a climate of fear. it is old-fashioned terrorism. or two things to get attention and create the sense of gloom and doom and despair. drive people out of the country and try to convince the international community that the project will not work. they had some limited success along the way. the afghan people said we are not buying that strategy. we are going to vote. host: this is the cover story of time magazine.

vote and theant to taliban wants to stop them. what america leaves behind. with thedon't agree title. the taliban has not returned. they are despised by most of the people. they are not in control of any of the population centers. the title is wrong. there are fears of their return. there are pockets of the country where they are present. the notion that they are on the way back is demonstrably wrong and not good journalism. it suggests a climate of fear that we don't want to falsely contribute to. that is a kind of headline that is tempting to put on a magazine . i don't see a basis for it. host: this is also a photograph from inside the article. the u.s. military has taken a step back. the afghan military has taken the lead in the election security.

that is right. the last time around, there were a lot of attacks on election day. with the american and nato forces in the lead. to be 150there seems attacks and they were very unsuccessful. violence was prevented and deterred. there was enough checkpoint manning and searching that they could not get in position to carry out what they wanted to. this is a violent country. i am not trying to sound overly optimistic. yesterday was a good day and an impressive day and the afghan people deserve to hear our complements for what they pulled off. this mean fors 30,000 troops in afghanistan? all three presidents have said that they would sign this agreement that would keep u.s. troops in afghanistan beyond

2014. guest: the afghans are doing 95% of the patrolling and checkpoint manning and fighting. that is why our casualties are lower. need 10,000 and during troops. air support, they don't have an air force. we are behind on that. certain kinds of intelligence support and long-range reconnaissance and striking with f-16s or drones on targets that are farther away. they can't quite fully do this on their own yet. it will take two or three years. we are talking about an exciting presidential election. it is also creating anxiety. this is a big year of transition. karzai has to step down. you don't want the anxiety

compounded by pulling all of our forces out. they are counting on us to stay. we can do a lot less than we have been and we already are. down by twore thirds. i think we will have to stay there for a few more years. have we mishandled a relationship with president karzai? guest: that is the next one question. i think we have mishandled a fair amount of it. the obama administration has gotten most of the decisions right. they have been resolute and forthright. they were willing to stay. president obama talked about ending the war but he has done it responsibly and slowly. i want to give them a lot of credit on the policy front. the personal backs and forth with president karzai have been counterproductive.

karzai deserves two thirds of the blame. he was challenged in public that would produce reactions that we would make things worse. that has been a big mistake. that the bbc is reporting out of 12 million registered -- 7s, 7 million him cap million cast ballots. guest: we expected a heavy turnout. i would've been happy with a moderate turnout. there was such a climate of uncertainty and fear. that is why i pushed back hard against the time magazine article. so far, the government is doing a nice job of holding onto the big cities. there might be enough for a where the war is most intense. exceed might not greatly

2010. i'm happy to be wrong. host: you say that a peaceful transition to a new president looked on as legitimate is essential for several reasons. future of the stability. it maintains support for afghanistan and in the congress. it does not again become a base of terrorism against the united states like we saw in the 1980's. guest: a successful election does not make a successful country. we still need to see them have a runoff. they need to come around a new president. the new needs to form a team that will be inclusive and then he needs to do a good job improving government. they have a huge corruption problem, we have a lot of un-development in afghanistan so this is just a good election day.

good election days in places --e iraq in 2005, or egypt ended up not being the harbingers of happy days ahead. so there is a long way still to go for this to be legitimate. they will be a enough fraud in this, even if this is done in much less time and this is largely identified and corrected by independent afghan commissions, there will be enough fraud that there will be some uncertainty about who should have been elected president once we get into the second round. that means that whoever loses is going to have a big choice about what he does at that moment. thathe cry foul and decide he has a reason to call his followers into mass protest, what is he except this result as imperfect but perhaps this is as good as we are going to get and then hopefully the winner will try to include the loser in some way in government, there is talk of strengthening the role of the prime minister position and maybe the loser could take that role or have some other position

in the government. there will be a long way to go to create legitimacy. it will not just come from the good election day. when is the second round and will president karzai step down? guest: he will step down when there is new president. we will get preliminary results this month and early second round month -- early second round results next may and then they will take them out to the remote villages, and the afghan forces will take and the -- take them to the cities and so forth, with a second round in june and then another good month, month and a half to certify that and maybe you get a declared winner of the election sometime during the summer in late july or early august and then you set up the transition process by the end of august, sometime in september is the most likely inauguration. host: michael o'hanlon is a senior fellow at the brookings institution here in washington dc. our phone lines are open and we

will get to your calls in just a moment. you can send us your tweets or an e-mail at journal@ cspan.org. joining us from new hampshire -- good morning. one question, are women allowed to vote during the voting process? for the peoplear that voted, with the taliban, possibly, for creating richer fusion for those who voted? great questions. first, women voted. and going back to the last elections, they voted then. with what percentage of the total vote was women, this is 20-30%, similar to the numbers of the student population. we are seeing movement towards equality. in the certainly going

right direction and women certainly voted. in terms of fear, yes, there was fear, but 7 million people voted anyway, and they voted knowing full well they would have to dip their fingers into different kinds of ink, one of which -- in two different kinds of ink, one of which would allow the taliban to see who voted, but people are still willing to take the risk of their own personal safety being put at risk because they believed so much in the democratic process. however this turns out and recognizing the imperfections, i would give a big complement to the afghan people for their bravery and commitment to democracy. >> this tweet from john kerry, who said the upcoming election in afghanistan is afghan owned and afghan led, a proud moment for the people and their history. >> that is well said by the secretary and he has been

admirable, very effective in afghanistan even as a senator. building a kind of relationship with president karzai that we have too little of, maintaining the ability to have respectful but still amicable disagreements at times. but still be able to work through a lot of tough issues. secretary kerry has been helpful on this issue. gamelwe want to thank kim from joining us, from the associated press. joining us from kabul. we appreciate you being with us. guest: >> thank you. host: give us a sense of how things unfolded yesterday. what would you see around the streets of kabul and the rest of afghanistan? guest: the excitement was palpable and there was a clear difference from 2009. people actually wanted to vote and they were standing in line and it was raining outside. they were standing in the mud. of men and women.

-- just at polling stations but some of them were. there were hundreds of people wanting to have their say, and the difference is that people were actually choosing the president. that made a big difference on and others of kabul cities. i will say in some areas, especially, obviously areas controlled by the taliban, i would say the majority of the areas, turnout was high. afghans you talked residents, how significantly do they view this vote yesterday? it wasthey felt significant, they really felt like this was a historic vote. they were knowledgeable of the threat of the violence. high-profileen attacks in recent weeks -- there wasly in kabul,

a rise in violence but still we saw the record turnout. we don't have figures show that we know that more than 7 million people voted. afghanistan -- we only have enough to make a census since 2001, so we think that there are only 13 million eligible voters but the turnout was high. i have michael o'hanlon who will weigh in as well. he may be earlier point that the fact that this vote even happened made it significant. guest: that's right. a lot of people give president karzai credit for that. he has earned their faith in recent months. down,voluntarily stepping which is a huge achievement and afghanistan. there is a history of installed leaders, with taliban rule at monarchy. i agree.: resident karzai, we put him on a pedestal in 2002 and decided he

would be the man in afghanistan. we did not help them build a strong army but we gave them a lot of money. we gave him more lords to make the country -- we get the money to buy off warlords to keep the country stable but then we call this corruption. the american views on karzai have changed more than karzai himself. he is a leader whose time has come and gone, he has had some accomplishments but it is good he is stepping down. he has done some good things and one more thing with letting the hastion process unfold, he also cap and ethnic cohesion in the country, he has had a mixed ticket of vice president and cabinet officials and governors representing not just the group where he comes from, but also zbek, but this is one nation, for all of the stresses. i am not here to lionize him too

much, but remember for all of his flaws he has done some good things and he has some strengths. host: let me ask you about the voting itself. done, did they use paper ballots and when will the final vote tally be available? guest: this is interesting, they use paper ballots. one ballot for president, and one for the proconsul's. showeders came in and their id cards, they had to have voter registration cards. they get their finger in the ink, which the international officials have described as almost dangerous. iny also dipped their finger other ink so it would be visible with ultraviolet rays.

they went to the voting booth, which was mostly cardboard. they marked their ballots and then they came out and put their ballots in a box. excited, everyone who voted was excited, waving their ink-stained fingers. the results are questionable, we thought that there would be partial results today, but now the officials say this is not the case because these are being transported and then the result tallies -- these are being taken in kabul. some candidates are giving estimates. ullah is claiming a high percentage of the vote, based on the result tallies at individual stations. but for full results of this will be at least one week or so. host: final question for you, othersshington post" and

say the u.s. military is invisible with voting today, on that front, what is the military able to do and what have they done? staying in the background but they were involved. many were involved in this is a iraqis.ness with the they are involved with the arab power. somewhere at the boxes and some of the central headquarters in kabul and some in the more remote provinces. countries and the provinces, but you did not see u.s. troops out there yesterday. on standby. i talked to a couple of generals, and they said that the afghans have them and the airpower was also on standby, attack helicopters and warplanes. had tonot heard if they use them, that i have had no

reports that they did. host: kim gamel is the afghan bureau chief or the associate press. nike for being with us. she joins us from kabul. we continue our conversation with michael o'hanlon from the brookings institution. we go to larry joining us on the republican line. with all dueanlon, respect, personal outrage does not trump physics nor does it knowledge and the evidence that they tore down building seven on 9/11. host: this is a different topic and we move on to jesse in michigan. caller: >> good morning. good morning. i have heard of different in afghanistan -- in afghanistan, i want to ask --

what is -- what is so special about afghanistan, all these wars going on. thank you, jesse, we will get a response. why afghanistan? guest: there have been a lot of conflicts in afghanistan and in the 19th century, we talked about the great game with the british and russian empires colliding in afghanistan, and standing up for their own country and pushing out these foreign powers. but in terms of the modern era it does begin with the soviet invasion. ae soviets tried to install true communist government, in the late 1970's, so the outside world again intervened in afghanistan. we decided we had to oppose that hartley for the good of the afghan people, but also for our own interests. we wanted to stop the soviets before they moved farther south

into iran. we gave a lot of arms to the afghan resistance fighters, and once the soviets were driven out, we said, we are done. we left afghanistan to our own -- to their own devices. there is no government in power, and we did not care. this was the end of the cold war, the first bush administration, and we kept our hands off. this was a bit of a mistake on our part, as well as in strategic terms because the minute we -- they compost something that we wanted, we left them to their own devices. later on, the chickens came home to roost. that was the front in which the 9/11 attacks were planned. at this point you can say this is becoming ancient history and al qaeda has bigger sanctuaries in pakistan or iraq or syria today, so why do we even care. that is the simple answer and i would like to keep it that w