(this may sound like a flame, I don't mean it to be a flame)
Just days after the tsunami struck on Dec. 26, U.S. military helicopters launched from an offshore flotilla rushed in food, water and medicine to desperate people stranded along the Aceh coast of this Indonesian island, saving thousands of lives. Since then, the U.S. government and the American private sector have committed some $1.6 billion to resurrect communities like Lampuuk.
Do you understand what's going on in this war? How we are fighting it? Who we are fighting?
This kind of humanatarian aid is a vital part of the war, and is going on all over the Islamic world.
If I may suggest
The Atlantic Monthly | October 2005
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200510/kaplan-us-special-forces
Imperial Grunts
With the Army Special Forces in the Philippines and Afghanistan—laboratories of counterinsurgency
by Robert D. Kaplan
merica is waging a counterinsurgency campaign not just in Iraq but against Islamic terror groups throughout the world. Counterinsurgency falls into two categories: unconventional war (UW in Special Operations lingo) and direct action (DA). Unconventional war, though it sounds sinister, actually represents the soft, humanitarian side of counterinsurgency: how to win without firing a shot. For example, it may include relief activities that generate good will among indigenous populations, which in turn produces actionable intelligence. Direct action represents more-traditional military operations. In 2003 I spent a summer in the southern Philippines and an autumn in eastern and southern Afghanistan, observing how the U.S. military was conducting these two types of counterinsurgency.
(snip)