Questions for Gen. Petraeus

Editor, The Times:

Successful counterinsurgency warfare first provides security by destroying or expelling the insurgent forces [“Puzzles persist in Afghanistan,” News, June 24]. Regardless of time or place, people suffering in these lawless, feral regions evaluate security by whoever is most lethal in firefights. Their allegiance goes to whoever wins the battles, regardless of civilian deaths due to collateral damage or deliberate executions seeking to retain control. Only by crossing the armed conflict boundary at the cruelest point in revolutionary war can the next phases of counterinsurgency warfare commence.

Therefore, the Senate Committee on Armed Services should ask Gen. David Petraeus the following questions:

Will noncommissioned officers be able to call for illumination rounds to reveal enemy firing positions?

Will troops be allowed a round in the chamber of their weapons?

Will troops be allowed to engage insurgents in the act of burying a roadside bomb?

Will troops engaged in combat now be able to call bombing and strafing runs to extricate themselves and win firefights?

Will crucial decisions be made by warriors in contact with the enemy, or by staff officers in remote bunkers?

Will you obey Articles 28 and 29 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which say protected persons within the enemy’s physical control cannot be used to render certain points and areas immune from military operations, or will you serve a political agenda?

Will our troops be given permission to win, or will the survivors be ordered to leave in 18 months after being regarded with derision and contempt by the Afghans?

— Nolan Nelson, Eugene, Ore.

It’s not a war

I wish officials would quit referring to our activities in Afghanistan as a war. We are involved in a police action mostly against the Taliban because the “legitimate” government of that nation can’t control its inhabitants.

The United States is apparently too dumb to learn from its past police actions. War fighters make lousy cops.

— Bob Wojtyna, Woodinville