The United States will not hamper its forces in Afghanistan by banning air strikes but will redouble efforts to limit civilian casualties, National Security Advisor James Jones said Sunday.
"We can't fight with one hand tied behind our back," General Jones said on ABC, arguing that Afghan President Hamid Karzai "understands that we have to have the full complement of our offensive military power when we need it." "We're going to take a look at trying to make sure that we correct those things we can correct, but certainly to tie the hands of our commanders and say we're not going to conduct air strikes, it would be imprudent," he said.
Karzai, who was in Washington last week, called for a halt to the air strikes after alleging that one had killed up to 130 Afghan villagers including women and children. "That's part of the combined arms package and so we probably would not do that," Jones said of the strikes. "But we are going to take very seriously the (criticism) and redouble our efforts to make sure that innocent civilians are not killed."
US regional commander General David Petraeus acknowledged Sunday bitter Afghan criticism about civilian casualties but said the Taliban bear "enormous blame" themselves. The head of US Central Command told CNN that he had spoken with Karzai about the issue in Washington.
Both the US and Afghan sides agreed that "we have to be very, very sensitive that our tactical actions ... in close air support and other enablers does not undermine our strategic goals and objectives," he said. "We'll certainly relook this, yet again, in the wake of this latest incident," Petraeus said. But he added that Afghanistan's own investigations had shown that the "Taliban bears enormous blame for this latest incident" by firing on US troops from inside villagers' houses.
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