Nicholas Kristof thinks that ISIS and others have a better long run strategy than we do. Their strategy is to prevent their world from becoming more like ours in education and the empowerment of women. By doing so they encourage the illiteracy, ignorance and oppression of women which are necessary for their kind of extremism to flourish. He believes that a basic truth of their universe is: "Their greatest strategic threat comes not from a drone but from a girl with a book. We need to recognize, and act on, that truth as well."
Kristof thinks we are more focused on the short run (bombing) than on the long run (education, empowerment of women, communications). Our military campaign against ISIS is estimated to cost $2.4 billion a year. How many kids could be educated for that amount of money? We give less to the Global Partnership for Education, a major multilateral effort, in a year than what we spend weekly in Syria and Iraq. We could do more to help the 3,000,000 Syrian refugees get schooling. They got a decent education in Syria; now they're getting an education on a level with the really down-and-out in Africa. Unicef is trying to raise money for these refugees, but they're only at 40% of their goal. If we miss this opportunity, those children will be tinder for future wars and extremism, and we’ll be stuck dropping bombs for generations to come.
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