This puts my faith back into humanity. I've heard people say "we should have nuked Afghanistan, to show that we are not to be messed with... you punch a bully in the face, you don't talk to him trying to work out your differences."

I've always felt that taking people out of ignorance will always make them less inclined to kill. The more logical justification people have for doing good and not doing bad vs purely faith-based, the harder it is for some religious nut-job to come in and say "kill the infidels in the name of god".