Apparently, al Qaeda is falling way behind on Web 2.0 stuff. "Who would have guessed," snarks Kevin Drum, "that blog commenters would turn out to be the Achilles heel of the international jihadist movement?" I just want the history books to record that the war was won when we killed whichever lieutenant was supposed to attend South by Southwest. To be a bit more pessimistic though, if the implication of this report is that there are still lots of people who want to join with al Qaeda but who're growing irritated with its centralized control structure, I don't know that I'd consider that a good development. It seems to suggest the possibility of a new generation of more aggressive, savvy terrorist organizations who will be competing with each other for recruits, and may do that by trying to kill folks in ever more spectacular and propaganda-ready ways.
