The phrase "attempt to defend a" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing efforts made to justify or support a particular position, argument, or action.
Example: "In his essay, he makes an attempt to defend a controversial viewpoint that many disagree with."
Alternatives: "try to justify a" or "make an effort to support a".
Machiavelli offers a political rationale ("The Medici government would only weaken itself by attacking a man who is in exile and cannot harm it") for what seems an attempt to defend a friend and, in his name, the Florentine people.
Unfortunately they lost their fly-half David Skrela on Thursday with an ankle injury that is unlikely to settle Gallic nerves as they attempt to defend a wafer-thin points advantage of four over Ireland.
Any attempt to defend a slacker approach to deficits risks looking like a pretext for backsliding at home.Yet Mr Hollande's promise to fight austerity will look empty if he sticks with Mrs Merkel in holding Greece to its fiscal targets—or is forced to impose more austerity at home.
Some students of Adorno's work have argued that his account of the role of "sensuous immediacy" can be understood as an attempt to defend a "legitimate anthropomorphism" that comes close to a weak form of animism (Bernstein 2001, 196).
As an attempt to defend a contextualist hidden variables interpretation, this position must concede that not only does the system have, in the Q-measurement situation, a value v(Q), but also, in a P-measurement situation, it has a value v′(Q), although perhaps v′(Q) ≠ v(Q).
Manager Roy Hodgson's concerns will be sporting ones as England's carelessness in front of goal and his decision to substitute man-of-the-match Wayne Rooney in a flawed attempt to defend a narrow lead helped Russia claim an undeserved point here in Marseille.
He said that immigrants with HIV should not be able to use the UK healthcare system and conjured up "statistics" in an attempt to defend an unjustifiable point.
Republicans will now be the ones who have to make the attempt to defend an incredibly unpopular bill.
Any attempt to defend an entire coastline with a ton of combat power will tie up a lot of forces, the vast majority of which will never be able to get to the fight.
This is what makes attempts to defend a party like the United Kingdom Independence party from accusations of racism so hollow.
But that rule has nothing whatever to do with the situation of a grand jury witness who has refused to testify and attempts to defend a subsequent charge of contempt.
