Sometimes accidents happen. Tuesday, the Pentagon admitted Navy warplanes struck “one or more” warehouses belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The 1,000-pound precision-guided bombs they carried destroyed part of a series of warehouses that were suspected to be in use by the Taliban.
It’s regrettable something like this could happen. Often during a wartime scenario, innocent people and buildings are caught in the crossfire.
But the only way to prevent this from happening during the kind of military campaign we’re employing is to not conduct one at all. And that is not an option.
As unfortunate as it is to have to conduct a military campaign, there is no other way to route the widespread terrorist network that has spider-webbed itself throughout Afghanistan and the rest of the world.
The Taliban has left the United States with no other option to deal with their oppressive style of government. They have already rebuked many attempts at diplomacy. Sadly, violence has become the solution to the problem.
In other parts of the country, Afghanistan’s government claimed the U.S. military attacked trucks carrying civilians. But these reports could not be independently confirmed. The Taliban has refused to allow independent confirmation of their claims, and these accounts must therefore be taken with a grain of salt.
As President Bush has said, this war will be waged - at least partially - in secret. It’s possible we won’t know if this will happen again. It’s likely that it might. The way our campaign is currently running, it’s definitely in the realm of possibility.
But despite how it may appear, we are not intentionally targeting civilians, and our forces are doing their best to ensure that only military targets are attacked. Our goal is to defeat the terrorist networks and the governments that protect them. In this case, we are fighting with the Taliban - and not the people of Afghanistan.
We can’t lose support for our military. We need them to bring down the rogue governments protecting the terrorists that plague our nation as well as others.
And when governments such as the Taliban refuse to act, we need our troops to bring down the terrorists and bring them to justice so that they cannot continue their acts of violence.
