Americans Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were hardly household names before their assassination by a drone missile strike occasioned a news cycle of jubilation in Washington’s endless war on terror. Yet far from winning greater security, such strikes serve only to terrify local populations across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), increasing anti-American sentiment.

Since the Reagan administration, when Oliver North dared Palestinian factional leader Abu Nidal to a personal fight, successions of Muslim militants have found themselves in American crosshairs. Yet as history has shown repeatedly, for every one killed or captured, dozens with even more virulent ideologies are waiting in the wings to replace them.

Khan, whose father is a Pakistani-born Charlotte, N.C. information technology specialist, as well as al-Awlaki, came from backgrounds of privilege. Yet their foot soldiers are mainly from the swarming slums of Karachi or desolate Afghan villages, while such destitute countries as Yemen and Somalia provide bases of operations for al Qaeda and al Shabaab.

Al Shabaab, after a tactical withdrawal from the Somali capital of Mogadishu, returned this week with a vengeance, killing 80 people in a suicide bombing. The atrocity, now all but commonplace, once again demonstrated that in asymmetrical warfare, the latest hi-tech killing machines are no match for an adversary’s nimbleness, its element of surprise and willingness to cause indiscriminate bloodshed.

Immense, impoverished MENA regions inspire, nurture and shelter extremists. Initiating rapid economic turnarounds in that part of the world would be far more effective than the counterproductive fix of bullets and missiles.

The idea of finding recruits, setting up training camps and establishing bases in failed and near-failed states dates back to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) under the leadership of Yassir Arafat. As the PLO chairman, he was branded a terrorist, an archenemy of the United States and its allies. Yet he went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize, subsequently serving as the first president of the Palestinian National Authority.

Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, spoke to repeated standing ovations at the recent 66th General Assembly of the United Nations as he made an impassioned case for Palestinian nationhood.

Yet unlike the PLO, many militant organizations now reject all existing geopolitical or diplomatic frameworks, disavowing any form of meaningful negotiation. Theirs is the abiding belief that such measures are inconsequential with the approach of Islam as the single global religion.

The younger, poorer and more desperate people become across MENA, the more convincingly this refusal to compromise resonates with them. The current policies of kill and capture only feed into the original rage and martyrdom complex, which are at the very root of extremism.

Yemen, where al-Awlaki and Khan were killed, is the poorest country in the Gulf region, with eighty percent of violent incidents attributed to disputes over water. The population, meanwhile, suffers greatly from waterborne and water-contact diseases. The United States is extending aid and expertise to address these issues, yet a single drone attack has the power to turn rivers of goodwill into burning sand.

The trillions used on killing and capturing can be far more effectively spent in initiating rapid economic turnarounds in regions whose poverty is now a palpable danger on every continent. The $3.8 billion earmarked to build more and deadlier drones may be a drop in the bucket for the defense department, but can be of life transforming help if judiciously used in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan, where unmanned drones routinely fly and kill.

Prosperity in such countries cannot be achieved through conventional foreign aid and economic assistance, which travel through well-grooved channels into the most corrupt of pockets. With a fraction of money used on such programs, American governmental agencies and NGOs can identify entrepreneurial opportunities and likely entrepreneurs in places where only the call to violence has resonated due to lack of any sane alternative.

Micro credit plans of a few thousand dollars can do miracles in countries where the annual GDP may be little more than a thousand dollars. Light manufacturing, information technology and e-commerce can put money in empty pockets. More crucially, the first rays of prosperity can shine hope in the hearts of those who believe they have been forsaken by the world at large.

Bangladesh has more than its share of corruption and poverty, yet as the birthplace of Grameen Bank, which pioneered micro lending, it indicates a promising path forward. Entrepreneurship is encouraged, particularly among women, while those in an emerging, computer savvy generation can use a laptop to earn in an hour what many Bangladeshis fail to earn in a week. Additionally, in conjunction with its Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology, the country is spearheading ambitious projects in the textile industry.

America’s agricultural portion of its GDP is an astonishing 1.1 percent. Yet this country’s farmlands not only provide abundantly for domestic consumption but support annual exports that approach a trillion dollars. At the same time, every year children by the tens of thousands die due to famine in the Horn of Africa, where advanced agricultural technology can offer miraculous per-acre yield.

Manufacturing and agricultural turnaround in MENA, even at optimum speed, will take five to ten years. Critical to near-term global peace and American security, however, is the shift from the unremitting language of kill and capture to one of care, reconciliation, reconstruction and productivity.

In California alone, those who have transformed the arid San Joaquin Valley into the world’s salad bowl and fruit basket, can share their knowledge to prevent starvation and rancor among Muslim Africans. Silicon Valley’s technology has the power to propel dormant, mediaeval economies into the twenty-fist century.

Standing between these bright promises and the increasingly dangerous despair they can erase are the Pentagon war planners and their friends in the arms manufacturing industry, Big Oil, America’s spent two-party system and a Wall Street that is now eliciting national outrage.

America is secure only when it calls upon its best angels. Perhaps soon our nation will realize that such angels differ radically from four-star generals and financial looters in three-button suits.