Editor:

If any of your readers believe that war is something that happens to other people, they are living in fantasy land. I was a 10-year-old boy living in a Chicago suburb when World War II began with Pearl Harbor.

In the next four years, I lost a close, older friend whose B-17 bomber was shot down over Germany and an uncle whose ship was sunk in the Atlantic Ocean. Two older cousins served and survived. My father was too old to serve and I was too young.

Nazi Germany surrendered as Russia closed in from the east and the allies closed in from the west. Hitler, the German leader, committed suicide. His body was never found. The civilian atrocities committed by the Nazis were revealed after the war in Europe ended.

Only 11 million civilians died in Nazi death camps. Nazis regularly bombed civilian targets to destroy the will of the “people” to fight. The Allies bombed industrial targets (which included civilian casualties) to destroy the ability of the enemy to fight.

In the Pacific Theater, the closer the war came to the Japanese homeland, the higher the casualties of the American fighting forces became.

The cost in American lives to take one tiny island of the Japanese homeland, Iwo Jima, (only one Japanese soldier surrendered after the war ended in 1948) convinced President Truman that 500,000 American casualties to end the war with Japan by conventional means was too high a price to pay. Instead, Truman ordered atomic bombs be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World War II ended very quickly, with no further loss of American or Japaneses lives.

War is war. The goal of war is the same for both sides — destroy the will and the ability of the other side to wage war. Radical Islam is at war with the United States and Europe.

There has been no serious attempt by the West to destroy either the will or the ability of the Radial Jihadists (or their supporters) to wage war against the Western democracies. Current responses have done nothing to eliminate attacks on Western civilian targets because only Muslim combatants have been targeted.

War is war. Civilian Muslims must be included as legitimate targets. Our civilians are being killed, so must theirs.

War must be carried to the enemy, whether they be civilians or combatants, in order to bring peace to the world.

William Faurot

Idyllwild