This thought..rather, thoughts, just occured to me.
We (ie, the West) are currently waging the NICEST war - and I hesitate to use the word "war" - in history. We do not target non-military targets (something not given to Germany or Japan), we rarely miss, we even stop bombing them on their holy days so as not to offend them. We drop as much food as we explosves - perhaps more. As we bomb them, we send many millions of dollars worth of aid to their borders.
Now, I bring this up - and don‘t like to call it a war - because this is a vacation compared iwth what the Afghanis have been doing to themselves for the past decade. Never in human history has anyone been so nice, and so non-offensive.
The media has so far failed to bring this up, at least not in its entirety.
Secondly, why is this called a "massive military buildup". From what I‘ve been reading the US has been using less than two dozen aircraft. My god, one aircraft carrier casually sailing by could have done what‘s been done so far - hell, the Canadian Air Force could have pulled this off!
Now, why are the peaceniks out en masse??? We are neither killing nor offending them, and we‘re feeding them. If somehow there are thousands of people in this world, who, despite having unprecedented access to news, facts, and information can still be so mal-informed as to find fault with this endeavour, this culture has problems. Let me advance this hypothesis (pieces of which have been already put forward in editorials):
Current liberal thinking - polictical correctness - does not allow for the existence of good and evil. Since we are all naturally good people, anyone who does bad things - murderers, drug users, drop-outs, genocidal terrorists - thus has to be a victim of various outside influences (bad parents, American foreign policy).
While this theory has long been questioned and bashed (thank-you Dennis leary) it still remains strong - hence, in response to the worst act of terrorism in history we are worried about offending someone. I would say that we have reached a crosroads - when this is said and done, political correctness will either have died a hard death, or someone stronger will have taken our place. There is a time an dplace for raional discussion, and there is a time and place for Imperialist gunboat diplomacy.