{"id":14320,"date":"2012-03-01T13:51:37","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T21:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=14320"},"modified":"2012-03-01T13:51:37","modified_gmt":"2012-03-01T21:51:37","slug":"grasping-at-straws-justifying-the-war-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/01\/grasping-at-straws-justifying-the-war-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Grasping at Straws: Justifying the War in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was caught stumbling for an answer recently on Afghanistan. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/blog\/166539\/when-did-united-states-last-kill-al-qaeda-fighter-afghanistan\">Via Glenn Greenwald<\/a>, George Zornick at <em>Nation<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/blog\/166539\/when-did-united-states-last-kill-al-qaeda-fighter-afghanistan\">followed up<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Finally, ABC\u2019s Jake Tapper\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/blogs\/politics\/2012\/02\/afghanistan-al-qaeda-and-security-todays-qs-for-os-wh-2272012\/\">asked<\/a>\u00a0Carney when was \u201cthe last time US troops in Afghanistan killed anybody associated with Al Qaeda.\u201d Carney didn\u2019t have an answer, and referred Tapper to the Defense Department and NATO\u2019s International Security Assistance Force.<\/p>\n<p>I queried those agencies Tuesday and got an answer today. According to a Defense Department spokesman, the most recent operation that killed an Al Qaeda fighter was in April 2011\u2014ten months ago. However, there was an \u201cAl Qaeda foreign fighter\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.isaf.nato.int\/article\/isaf-releases\/al-qaeda-foreign-fighter-captured-during-security-operation.html\">captured<\/a>\u00a0near Kabul in May 2011, and an \u201cAl Qaeda facilitator\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.isaf.nato.int\/article\/isaf-releases\/isaf-joint-command-morning-operational-update-january-30-2012.html\">captured<\/a>\u00a0in the Paktiya province on January 30 of this year.<\/p>\n<p>By comparison, there have been\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/icasualties.org\/OEF\/ByMonth.aspx\">466<\/a>\u00a0coalition fatalities since April 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Given Carney\u2019s repeated insistence that the \u201cnumber one\u201d \u00a0purpose of the American mission is to \u201cdisrupt, dismantle and ultimately defeat\u201d Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and given the ongoing sacrifices the country is making to achieve that goal, it\u2019s very important to keep these benchmarks in mind. It is surprising Carney wasn\u2019t aware of them, or didn\u2019t disclose them\u2014though, perhaps it\u2019s not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was caught stumbling for an answer recently on Afghanistan. Via Glenn Greenwald, George Zornick at Nation followed up: Finally, ABC\u2019s Jake Tapper\u00a0asked\u00a0Carney when was \u201cthe last time US troops in Afghanistan killed anybody associated with Al Qaeda.\u201d Carney didn\u2019t have an answer, and referred Tapper to the Defense [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-14320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14321,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14320\/revisions\/14321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14320"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}