As we come upon the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, there’s still plenty of room for debate about our response or lack thereof. There’s still enough diversity of educated opinion to eventually bring about a good policy.

That’s as it should be, and a sign that we have not allowed the terrorists to set the agenda of the strongest democracy in the world. Though many of us would like to see our country more united on a number of issues, a United States that takes a single view of the 9/11 attacks would be some evidence that terrorists were not only winning the war on terror, but the more important war of getting us to think like they do, a thought process that doesn’t tolerate differences of opinion.

Terrorists, insurgents, political extremists know that it’s easier to create and run a dictatorship than a democracy. It’s easier create fear in uneducated people than educated ones. It’s easier to lead starving people to bad water than it is to lead people who are well fed.

That is why organizations like al-Qaida were successful in places like Afghanistan, Yemen and to some extent Pakistan.

Al-Qaida has, to a degree, learned how to use the weapon of terror to make it easier for citizens in the United States to think they must abandon some of their democratic principles, some of their civil rights, to fend off and defeat these dictatorships that have the disaffected, uneducated, starving of the world as their “country.”

The ability and willingness of the United States and its allies to win over the potential citizens of al-Qaida’s “country” will be one of the strongest weapons we have to fight the spread of global terrorism, which is really the spread of an ideology.

As the richest country in the world, we can, and have to some extent, already loaded our weapons.

In a somewhat heartening speech this year at Minnesota State University, former Polish President and Solidarity union movement leader Lech Walesa had a simple observation on terrorism. He said when people of these developing countries become educated, the religious jihad teachers that graduate suicide bombers will no longer have a ripe market.

It’s an observation worth considering and asking ourselves if we are doing anything to bring about this education.

We’ve poured $5 billion of aid into Iraq from 2003 to 2006, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. We’ve rebuilt infrastructure such as airports and water plants, and we’ve spent millions on the health, welfare, nutrition of million of Iraqis. While much of the focus of the policy has been on the $50 billion cost of the war, these aid programs are crucial to getting Iraqi people to be fed, to be healthy and to know we are at least trying to rebuild their war-torn country.

A 2007 Bush budget initiative for the State Department included $115 million to teach our state department professionals, security officials and international aid workers to learn Middle Eastern languages. Sounds like a simple thing, but clearly we cannot help educate people in these other countries if we don’t know how to speak their language.

But a quick look at the money we are spending on education initiatives in other countries, even humanitarian aids, may seem out of line with the importance of the education task.

The total budget for the U.S. Department of State increased 3.8 percent from 2005 to 2006. Given the gargantuan task of spreading education not only in Iraq, but places such as Lebanon and Syria, 3.8 percent seems to be a significant underfunding.

The State Department budget is scheduled to go up 11.9 percent in 2007. Within that budget, just 1.4 percent is scheduled to go for education and cultural exchange programs, about 1 percent for the Peace Corps and about 2 percent to run the entire U.S. Agency for International Development, the frontline group for many aid programs.

Large portions of the State Department budget go for foreign military financing (14 percent) and diplomatic programs (14.5 percent).

The anniversary of 911 requires we take stock of not only how much more safe we are, but also how we will fight the ignorance and famine that offers terrorists a ready and willing market for recruits.