{"id":13403,"date":"2014-08-07T01:53:42","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T08:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=13403"},"modified":"2014-08-07T01:53:42","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T08:53:42","slug":"our-fallen-general","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/07\/our-fallen-general\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Fallen General"},"content":{"rendered":"

I trust you already know that, for the first time since Vietnam, a General officer has been killed in a war zone.  From all accounts Major General Harold J Greene was an excellent, dedicated commander.  I ask that you join me in condolences, thoughts ands prayers for his family, his friends, his troops and all who loved him.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"0807GenGreene\"For the first time since Vietnam, a United States Army general was killed in an overseas conflict on Tuesday when an Afghan soldier opened fire on senior American officers at a military training academy.<\/p>\n

The slain officer, Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, was the highest-ranking member of the NATO-led coalition killed in the Afghanistan war, and his death punctuated the problems vexing the Americans as they try to wind down the 13-year-old conflict, contending with a political crisis that has threatened to splinter the Afghan government and leave it unable to fend off the Taliban.<\/p>\n

The general was among a group of senior American and Afghan officers making a routine visit to Afghanistan\u2019s premier military academy on the outskirts of Kabul when an Afghan soldier sprayed the officers with bullets from the window of a nearby building, hitting at least 15 before he was killed.<\/p>\n

Though American officials said General Greene was not believed to have been specifically targeted, his violent death at the hands of an Afghan soldier, not an insurgent<\/strong>, was a reminder of the dangers faced by even the highest-ranking, and best protected, officers in Afghanistan\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

No doubt he shall be mourned my many.<\/font><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sad to report that only minutes after hearing of this I also heard Republicans using the occasion to fault Obama and call for a continuation of the US occupation of Afghanistan.  Thy are saying this proves that we have not yet defeated Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.  How absurd!<\/font><\/p>\n

There is no evidence at all of any association between the attacker and Al Qaeda.  He attacked us because we are foreign and occupying his country.  The Afghan people have a history of driving out foreign occupiers for thousands of years.  There is one way to stop the attacks.  Leave their country.  In the 19th and early e0th centuries, the British learned that lesson the hard way.  In the 20th century, so did the Russians.  In the 21st century, we are learning it, but not quickly enough.  If leaving Afghanistan were a bad idea, Republicans would not oppose it.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I trust you already know that, for the first time since Vietnam, a General officer has been killed in a war zone.  From all accounts Major General Harold J Greene was an excellent, dedicated commander.  I ask that you join me in condolences, thoughts ands prayers for his family, his friends, his troops and all […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}