Vodkapundit - Not Getting It Department Stephen disagrees when Z. Brzezinski says "The "Islamic" jihad is, at best, a fragmented and limited movement that hardly resonates in most of the world."

Back in the Bad Old Days, it took a nation-state to fight a nation-state. Japan built aircraft carriers to attack us at Pearl Harbor. Germany made tanks to slice up France. The Soviet Union produced missiles in about the same quantity (although with probably lower quality) that Charmin makes toilet paper.

But the Bad Old Days were also the Good Old Days. You could depend on the Soviets not to do anything really, really stupid – like, say, launch cruise missiles at the World Trade Center in peacetime.

Today, however, the price of offensive weaponry has gone down. If you want to take on a global power, you don't need any million-dollar tanks with Chobam armor and laser rangefinders. You don't need any billion-dollar aircraft carriers, billion-dollar ships to protect them, billion-dollar planes to launch off them, or billion dollar crews to man them. You don't even need a multi-billion dollar nuclear weapons program – although certain people sure would like to have one.

You don't even need a Hitler, a Tojo, or a Stalin.

In today's world, all it takes to take on the Big Bad is 19 young men and a few million dollars in seed money.

This is the downside to massive "empowerment of the individual".