"When Osama bin Laden issued his videotaped message to the American people last month, a young jihad enthusiast went online to help spread the word.

The global jihad is as close as YouTube, which features videos like an ode to suicide attacks, a message 'to black Americans' from a bin Laden lieutenant, and an Iraq insurgency promotional message.

'America needs to listen to Shaykh Usaamah very carefully and take his message with great seriousness,' he wrote on his blog. 'America is known to be a people of arrogance.'

Unlike Mr. bin Laden, the blogger was not operating from a remote location. It turns out he is a 21-year-old American named Samir Khan who produces his blog from his parents’ home in North Carolina, where he serves as a kind of Western relay station for the multimedia productions of violent Islamic groups..."

Personally, I think the United States ought to consider armed intervention in North Carolina. If we could somehow turn it into a democracy, it could spark further democratization in the region. And that would undercut this sort of support for terrorism.

But seriously, this is one more example of how information technology has altered the strategic landscape by blurring the distinctions between fantasy and reality in the minds of delusional young males. I still believe we are approaching a time when the United States will be forced to treat people from terrorism-producing states like Pakistan and the Arab world as we did those from the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, i.e. as requiring special control and surveillance.