Concededly, the terror attacks by radical Islamists in Bali, Bombay, Beslan, London, Thailand, Madrid, Jordan, New York, Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon, Kenya, West Africa, Somalia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Nigeria, The West Bank, Gaza, Munich, Sudan, Indonesia, etc. were not all carried out by the same group for precisely the same reasons directed by a single high command.

Sometimes there is a vertical command and control function (bin Laden definitely ordered the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and Iran probably ordered the Hezbollah attacks on Israel last week). Often there is no such command and control.

As Thomas Friedman has observed regarding economic activity, "cheap, ubiquitous telecommunications have obliterated impediments to international economic competition," causing the world to be economically "flat." Well, for similar reasons the world is flat for terrorist military and cultural aggression as well. The impediments to asymmetrical terrorist war have been obliterated by telecommunications and new compact dangerous weapons.

It is curious that so many "experts" and commentators who have comprehended the reality and significance of globalism in the economic realm (even though it is not a vertically commanded process -- indeed precisely because it is not vertically commanded) are so obtuse in seeing the same phenomenon expressed in the realm of terror and cultural aggression.

And yet, one cannot understand the significance of the current Mideast war being fought out in Lebanon and Israel without seeing it as part -- however ambiguously connected -- of the larger struggle between radical Islamists and the rest of us.

The fact that the connections are formed by common ideological and religious perceptions and similar sources of money rather than by a conventional military/political chain of command hardly renders the events unconnected. It merely makes them harder to understand and successfully attack.

This is very much going to be a thinking man's war, and will not be won by merely applying more brute military force than the other side. Unfortunately for us, America has usually won its wars by material attrition of the enemy (along with the bravery of our warriors). This time material advantage will not be enough. Sometimes overwhelming conventional military force will be required (a bigger Army and Marine Corp is inevitable), and sometimes use of force will be counterproductive.

Right now, what we lack most is a functioning political/media process that permits the nation (and potential allied peoples) to comprehend the world realistically. The current debate on Lebanon exemplifies the mental and moral confusion that obstructs the formation of rational policy.

In the coming years we will need Democratic, Green and independent brains as well as Republican ones, French, Russian and Nigerian brains as well as American ones, if we are to think our way to victory. But first we must have collective clarity.