The interesting thing is that technology and globalization is fracturing the West as well as the Muslim world. Consider the “revolt of the elites” ala Obama against Bush watered down populism, or the Yosi Sergants and Shepherd Faireys of the West, against Sarah Palin and her followers.

Just as the AK-47, cheap IED, disposable cell phones, the internet, and lots of global travel and mobility enable the Jihadis modeling themselves after Mohammed (kill the Western enemy in Medina, to assemble an exile army and retake Mecca), the internet, astonishing skills, and alternative media make the Joe the Plumber guys in the game against the Sergant/Fairey hipsters of independent wealth.

[It is fascinating to see the class divide in Fairey/Sergant/Ayers -- people of wealth and leisure, against the populists. In that regard the Obama backers are like the Jacobins facing the emergence of an obscure Corsican corporal somewhere.]

Technology by keeping underdogs in the fight allows for fights to just keep going on. Until the fight intensifies for one of naked survival.