There Are No Innocent Civilians in War

E-Mail to Congress:

EIN News says, "U.S. General Petraeus Vows to Protect Afghan Civilians. The new chief of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has vowed to protect Afghan civilians as he has been briefing allies and partners at NATO HQ in Brussels before heading to Kabul. (bbc.co.uk)".

Bad move! The above statement implies that Afghan civilians are innocent civilians. In war, there is no such thing as innocent civilians. Civilians are either for you or against you in favor of the locally established government. For example, there were not a significant number of innocent German civilians, during World War II. The people elected Hitler. They fought for Hitler. They worked in factories to produce war goods for Hitler.

In an environment such as Afghanistan, it is difficult to determine who the civilian enemies are. It should be assumed that every Afghani is an enemy, until he proves otherwise. This does not mean that killing civilians should be a high priority item. The first priority is the killing of Afghanis who are obviously bearing arms against us. Civilians are in the second category, to be later divided into local government supporters or our friends, and then handled accordingly. We learned this in Korea and Vietnam. Do we have to sacrifice more GI's to learn it again?