Accurate. On one hand, we didn't want to fuel the fire, but on the other, that inflammatory article forced the attacker to reveal their hand. So it was actually to our benefit, strangely enough.
I think two key parts of what you said are "most people" and "normal people". This normativity is taken for granted here. Preference for terse messages is ultimately a matter of taste and I've yet to see evidence that one belongs to a clear majority.
I like to think of dog training as programming an emotional computer. There are lots of similarities (breaking up problems into smal steps for one) and the payoff feels just as great.
Though it's a good point I don't think it's valid counter-argument to the moral imperative "we should provide good education to our nation's children." Globalism may be around the corner, but until then, "our" nation's society is the one "we" are responsible for.
So it's like enforcing speed limit laws- the government can't possibly ticket every person who drives over the speed limit, so they ticket some percentage of speeders and from that expect that less people will speed.