More surprising is the direction in which the world's collective unconscious has begun to move. Instead of the boastful overconfidence and defiant patriotism that would normally distort political language in this early stage of a serious military confrontation, most news and analysis about the looming conflict has been twisting public opinion the opposite way, with defeatist misinformation, morally dubious self-flagellation, exaggerations of the enemy's invincibility and glamourised accounts of their methods and goals.

I have been increasingly reminded of the strange mental pathology known as Stockholm syndrome, whose most famous victim was American heiress Patty Hearst. This is the chilling psychological reversal whereby victims of brutality and hostages of murderous gangsters become fanatical supporters of the people who terrorised them. How else can one explain what has become the standard analysis of the confrontation ahead?

Consider how the standard argument goes: First, the enemy in this war is said to be invisible and therefore impossible to defeat. Second, the sinister invisibility of the terrorist threat is said to have filled the US with a paranoid fury. Since it cannot get the terrorists, the country is bent on a racist, anti-Islamic retribution that will kill thousands of poor and defenceless people. This irrational lashing out will inevitably breed more terror and will therefore advance the terrorists' evil goals.

If the retribution is directed at Afghanistan, the reasoning goes, the result will be even worse. The Afghans are the world's most vicious fighters, have never been defeated in war and, moreover, an attack on Afghanistan would achieve nothing, even if a bloody disaster could be averted.

There is a grain of truth in each of these statements. But there was also a grain of truth in Hitler's claims that Jewish bankers had enriched themselves at the expense of German workers and in Stalin's belief that kulak peasants were hoarding bread. None of this justified the extermination of Jews or slaughter and starvation of millions of Ukrainian peasants.

There is nothing invisible or invincible about the enemies in this war. The hijackers have been identified, dozens of suspected accomplices have been arrested and Osama bin Laden's direct involvement in previous attacks on US targets, including the World Trade Centre, has been established.

Turning to the US response, far from lashing out, the Bush administration has focused on a reasonable and potentially achievable task. It appears to have set two positive and precise goals: to capture or kill bin Laden and other known terrorists; and to "end states" known to sponsor or support terrorists. No reasonable person would object to the first aspiration, although it may be difficult to achieve. But the second aim has sent a chill round the globe. The phrase "ending states", deliberately used on Monday by Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, may inspire apocalyptic fears of Dresden-style carpet bombing. But is this really what the US intends? It seems more likely Wolfowitz was choosing his words carefully when he spoke of ending terrorist states rather than nations or countries.

In a conventional war, the distinction between a state and the people it rules might appear a hypocritical diversion. But in a confrontation with Afghanistan, the distinction between the wretched, impoverished Afghan people and their monstrous Taliban oppressors could not be more clear. The most amazing feature of the phony war raging in the world's media has been the lack of attention to the horrors the sadistic Taliban fanatics have inflicted on the people of Afghanistan.

What the Taliban have done in the past five years – above all to the women, but also to the large ethnic minorities, millions of now landless peasants and smaller, non-Muslim groups – ranks as one of the greatest crimes committed against humanity.

If any government in the world attempted to crush a racial group such as Africans or Jews with the sort of oppressive, humiliating and murderous laws imposed on Afghan women by the Taliban, the civilised world would long since have taken the most extreme measures – quite possibly including military action – to eliminate this regime.

But even if the moral case for eliminating the Taliban is irrefutable, how could this be achieved? Surely Afghanistan is an impossible military target, with an unbroken record of defeating mighty powers?

This belief seems, again, to be based on a series of half-truths. If the US goal were permanently to conquer Afghanistan and subdue its people, then history, geography and the ferocity of the Afghan fighters might indeed militate against it. But if the objective is to destabilise and topple the Taliban regime, history and geography are on the US side.

Terrorism may be a mental disease that can never be fully defeated, but the US and the civilised world could surely topple the Taliban. That would send an unforgettable message to the leaders of other terrorist regimes.