How Will President Obama's New Policy Tackle Terror?

The political cartoon in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn perhaps said everything that Pakistanis wanted to say about a new American policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In this file photo, Pakistani tribesmen offer funeral prayers for the victims of a missile strike...

In this file photo, Pakistani tribesmen offer funeral prayers for the victims of a missile strike attack in the main town of Miranshah on February 15, 2009. A suspected US missile strike destroyed a major Taliban training camp in Pakistan on February 14, killing at least 27 mainly Al-Qaeda foreign operatives, security officials said. Two missiles fired by an unmanned drone struck the camp of top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud in the tribal area of Ladha near the Afghan border, they said, adding Mehsud was not in the camp at the time of the strike.

(THIR KHAN/AFP/Getty Images)

A CIA drone flies above the tribal areas, but instead of firing missiles it waters a bed of terrorists. The message: The CIA and the military campaigns here help grow the militancy.

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Across this troubled country, where the safest of places -- a mosque -- wasn't safe today, there is a hope that President Obama's new strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan replaces firepower with brainpower.

For years Pakistanis and Afghans -- particularly the Pashtuns living along the border -- have been looking for their lives to improve, their children's education to increase and their vision of the future to change.

And so they latched onto Obama's call today for a tripling of economic aid to Pakistan.

"A campaign against extremism will not succeed with bullets or bombs alone," Obama said. "Al Qaeda offers the people of Pakistan nothing but destruction. We stand for something different."