Just as a suicide bomber can do incalculable damage, so can a small group of determined fanatics. The Jihadist movement is hydra-headed. Afghanistan, then Pakistan, now Yemen. How many really belong to the Taliban in Pakistan? Not many, and yet look at what they have achieved against a large state. I daresay not only the US but India is watching Pakistan with the gravest apprehension. Could it really live with a Taliban-dominated Pakistan next door?
The odd thing for any student of history or human psychology, or even any onlooker, is how deeply unattractive these ideologies truly are. They preach a lack of freedom, and they practice the destruction of pleasure. Their most precious commodity is fear. But some human beings embrace such punitive ideologies with relish.
Like the Puritans in seventeenth century Europe, or the early twentieth century communists, they are strong because they live a crazed, passionate dream and regard themselves as the elect. They will use any means necessary. It will all end only when they spend themselves, or some other attractive notion comes along to defeat this one or make it irrelevant.
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