What is interesting is that while any of the jihadists may look like a joke, we can’t ignore them. Remember that news some month before the Cole of an attempted bombing of an American vessel when the small boat loaded with explosives simply drowned. Its too tempting to laugh them out as hapless miserable clowns until you remember that the next time they (or some other “they”) succeeded.
Modern technology did lower the entry cost for evil on large scale to be successful. No need in the first class military of Germany or Japan WWII size supported by the first class industry. You can buy in on the cheap (relatively speaking). Plus they need central command even less than Red Brigades needed Soviets directions. A distributed network of suicidal/homicidal maniacs in a small world of modern communications and miniaturized technology. Its hard to stay optimistic sometimes...