Damage

To the editor:

The recent reports of remarkable success of our rocket attacks on Pakistan make me downright proud of our military industrial complex.

During the Vietnam war the massive bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia (the latter was sort of not our enemy) was reported to kill only bad Vietnamese and, presumably, Cambodians. The bombs somehow avoided innocent civilians — women and children and the elderly. Or come to think of it, I believe they finally decided there were no innocent civilians so it was OK either way.

Anyway, my point is that our new rockets fired from drones are much more accurate in picking out Taliban or al-Qaeda or even ordinary out-of-work farmers who signed on to work for the bad guys. Our rockets must have some sort of radar that makes them avoid the same innocent civilians who were killed in that other war. The very few that we kill who actually are not fighting against us are called “collateral damage” — like broken windows or teapots. We learned a lot in Iraq about how to kill only people who deserve to be killed, or who picked the wrong side to join, but, after all, war without collateral damage would not be much of a war.

We all can be proud that this is being done with our tax money and in our name, and we ourselves can take credit for the results. In any case, we will have to live with the results.