Recently, the news has been reporting on the American "smart" weapons that have killed and injured civilians in Afghanistan. As the American-led strikes continue, it is inevitable that more mistakes like these will be made.
Already, many opponents of American military action have pointed to these civilian casualties as examples of how the United States is little different from the terrorists we are hunting.
The difference between us is that we did not intend to harm innocent bystanders. The terrorists were hoping they would kill more.
The attacks we are making are not intended to terrorize the Afghani people, as Al Qaeda's attack was meant to terrorize us.
Our objective is to weaken the Taliban's military capabilities and remove them as a threat both to us and to the world. It is unfortunate that innocent people will lose their lives in that process, and no one in the U.S. military feels good about such tragic mistakes.
What we need to remember is that the U.S. military has priorities. Its mission is not to act in the best interests of every man, woman and child in Afghanistan.
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Its primary purpose is to safeguard the people of the United States. Such an attitude may seem provincial or isolationist in this era of globalism, but the fact remains that our government's duty to protect us must take precedence over our concern for the people of Afghanistan.
A lot of the confusion surrounding the United States attacks comes from their characterization as vengeance.
Despite the justifiable anger most Americans feel at the terrorist attacks on our country, the Bush Administration has taken the right approach to our response.
Rather than blindly taking revenge by indiscriminately bombing their civilians, we waited to gather detailed intelligence data on the Taliban's military dispositions, and now we are systematically destroying their ability to cause further harm.
These are not attacks of aggression or vengeance. Rather, they are a form of active defense. To quote the old football saying, "the best defense is a good offense."
The same principle is echoed in the writings of Machiavelli and Sun Tzu.
If we were to stay at home, working only to defend the land we stand on, we would be giving the terrorists the advantage. They would be able to move freely throughout the world, expanding their operations and keeping us forever in fear.
By taking the war to them, not just with bombs but with criminal investigation, financial measures, and the support of the rest of the Muslim world, we are forcing them into retreat, limiting their options, destroying their support mechanisms and hopefully driving them into extinction.
It is tragic when our military kills innocent people, and it is our responsibility to ensure that they take whatever measures possible to avoid causing harm to those who are not our enemies.
That was part of the impetus for the creation of "smart" weaponry in the first place. In the days before laser- and satellite- guided missiles, civilian casualties in warfare were unavoidable. Without this new technology it is likely that our bombing would have killed many hundreds of Afghani civilians.
What this seems to indicate is that the United States has lost much of its stomach for warfare. If we become so afraid of harming innocents that we refuse to do what is necessary to defend ourselves, we will be surrendering our freedom to men whose goal is to kill as many of us as they can.
They literally will not stop attacking us until we are all dead or enslaved.
Osama bin Laden has talked of his dream of one day seeing the United States broken up into separate warring nations.
While that is very unlikely to ever happen, it should indicate that this is not a conflict that will be resolved as long as he is alive.
In a conflict that cannot be resolved until one side or the other has been destroyed, we must place our priority on our own survival.
It is a mark of our compassion and humanity that we also care for the lives of the people of Afghanistan, but we cannot allow that concern to prevent us from fighting this battle.
by Craig A. Butler
Daily Lobo Columnist
