Pakistan Taliban - It is about Education

This morning Benazir Bhutto was brutally assassinated by another misguided individual who thinks the answers to all questions comes from bullets and bombs. I fear that this world is becoming a ruthless, cold place as we enter a century where the "shoot first and ask questions later" mentality has firmly taken hold.
We will spend more than a Trillion Dollars making bombs and weapons of mass destruction. Our ten million dollar cruise missiles will successfully destroy the hundred dollar mud houses in Afghanistan and as the manufacturers of armaments and plans rejoice in the orders that they fulfill, innocents around the world will pay the price for these armaments as the become collateral casualties, collateral refugees who will then spawn another generation of individuals who become the "suiciders" (another word coined by GW) of the future.
Building a school in a country like Pakistan costs barely ten thousand dollars and one can educate almost a hundred students a year there. The trillion we have spend, the gazillions we are getting ready to spend could educate the entire nations of Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is where we blunder. We are fighting this battle with weapons when it should be fought with education. The Taliban (the word means "students") are fighting this war with the weapon of "education" (their brand, of course) and by doing so they seem to mock us with not just "the pen is mightier than the sword" but that "the pen is mightier than missiles, bombs and all your armaments put together".
The Al-Qaeda/Taliban have now had a generation schooled in their mold, this generation is now teaching a second generation. Their offer of "education", food and shelter to the poor children of these countries provides them with grateful graduates/talibs who are willing to return the favor by sacrificing themselves for the taliban cause. One would think that with all the suicide bombings that have taken place, the Talibans would run out of "human resources". but by creating a mass educational system, this resource is multiplying and quadrupling, and will continue to do so until such time that we expend our resources in building schools, education, food and a safe place to nurture the young generation of tomorrow. Unfortunately it is much easier for politicians to fear monger than to provide solutions so we are indeed set for a rough ride. Deporting tens of thousands of "illegal" Muslims from the US didn’t help either.
The US should learn from that noble American, Greg Mortensen, who has done more to battle the Taliban influence, by creating schools in the unforsaken parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, then the entire machinery of the US and NATO. In short, we are in a long struggle that has not yet begun. It will begin when we step back from fighting bullets with missiles, and start fighting fanaticism with education.
Bhutto's assassination is not a reflection on Pakistan, it is a response to the stimuli generated by the megatons of bombs that litter the entire world. The more we bomb the greater crescendo this response will reach.
Best wishes for the New Year. In the hope that these musings will be posted to a year gone by, not to return.