ABC’s Jon Karl pressed the White House press secretary on whether they view the Taliban as a terrorist organization or not, especially given that the Treasury department has the Taliban on a list of specialty terrorist groups.
But Josh Earnest, as you might have suspected, couldn’t answer the question directly. He tries to argue they are different from Al Qaeda because they don’t have global ambitions, and he even admits they carry out attacks that are ‘akin’ to terrorist acts. But they only do it in Afghanistan so that means…I guess…that they aren’t a terrorist organization or something. I don’t know. It’s hard to make heads or tails out of it when the are spinning it like a washing machine.
Maybe I’m wrong here, but wasn’t it the Taliban that facilitated Al Qaeda’s training camps that led to the attack on our twin towers that killed 3,000 people on 9/11? If that alone doesn’t make them a terrorist group, I don’t know what does.