Killing terrorists is necessary, but how do you stop the next generation of terrorists? And the generation after that? This is how.

Reuters wrote:

Clinton pilots subsidized malaria drugs in Africa
Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:25AM EDT
By Emmanuel Kwitema

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton launched a program on Sunday to make subsidized malaria drugs available in Tanzania in a test scheme that could serve as a blueprint for Africa as a whole.

The project will make life-saving ACT drugs available at 90 percent less than the current market price to a national drug wholesaler, which will then distribute them to rural shops.

Malaria, caused by a parasite carried by mosquitoes, kills up to 3 million people a year worldwide and makes 300 million seriously ill. Ninety percent of deaths are in Africa south of the Sahara, mostly among young children.

Many of those lives could be saved with modern artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) drugs, which are far more effective than older treatments such as chloroquine. But a price of up to $8 to $10 per treatment puts them out of reach for many people.

"Not one soul should die of malaria," Clinton told reporters at a town outside Dar es Salaam after touring three medical stores....
The pilot program by the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative is designed to test the practicality of subsidizing ACT drugs as a way to increase their use, a foundation spokesman said. The program will be rolled out in two areas in central Tanzania and targets 450,000 people in a year...
The former U.S president said his Clinton Foundation and UNITAIDS, a global anti-AIDS group, had agreed a deal with pharmaceutical firms to reduce prices of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) for poorer nations.
I wish the US had spent $100 billion on these sorts of programs instead of the Iraq war. How do you think Mom & Dad feel when they can't afford medicine to save their son's life, while Americans grow fat? How do you think Mom & Dad feel after their son's life is saved? If the United States provided the drugs that saved their son's life, that family would feel incredible gratitude to the US. If fundamentalist groups provide the drugs that saved their son's life--which is generally the sort of thing Hamas and Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army do in their own countries--the family is going to be extremely loyal to those groups. The son might even want to pay the group back by sacrificing his life for their cause...

I'm not saying the US (and Europe) owe these people anything, nor that it is wrong for Westerners to have wealth when other people are poor. But it is simply a fact that in a dozen countries with corrupt and ineffective central governments, radical groups are winning the population over by providing the sorts of services that make the difference between life and death for extremely poor people. If the US and Europe don't do it, the radical groups will continue to be popular and the West will continue to be unpopular.