Somalia

* Regarding the article by A.J. Bacevich (Commentary, April 1), I would like to ask him a question.

It is a concern, of course, to all of us in our country that our military in Somalia fired on and killed a pregnant woman and 12 other civilians, as stated in his article. Bacevich implies that we should not expose our military to situations where these unfortunate isolated incidents can happen.

Perhaps he would prefer that we had not gone to Somalia and had let the local military continue its wholesale slaughter and let the starvation go on and on. This seems to be the conclusion from his article. I believe we took the right action, although maybe we pulled out too soon.

IRVIN C. CHAPMAN

Costa Mesa