Letter: Give civilians fair warning

Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2001 | 9:01 a.m.

There have been some very distressing statements by those setting policy as to how the terrorist war is going to be conducted.

One of those statements was from one of our rear admirals and repeated by other leaders. He stated that if the Taliban move their tanks and guns to civilian neighborhoods, that we would not destroy the neighborhood.

What can he be thinking? That is exactly what the Taliban and our past enemies have counted on. The result was that many of our soldiers were killed by these same weapons that were placed in civilian neighborhoods and were not destroyed by our military out of fear of killing civilians.

We have a choice to make. Do we protect our soldiers or do we let them die to appease critics of the war and our enemies that take advantage of our respect for life?

The civilians should be given a short warning that wherever tanks, guns, ammunition, other weapons or soldiers are, they will be attacked. The civilians can then move out and away from these targets or suffer the consequences.

That is more consideration than our thousands of dead fellow Americans and other innocent civilians were given by the terrorists who existed because of the support from the country, which is our first target in this war.

EUGENE OSKO