after the Taliban collapse, then what?

Louis and all-

Very interesting comparison of Islamists and Narodniks.  However, the more
things change, they do not in all respects stay the same.  I have argued
that the Arquilla et al "Netwar" idea is just hype, and so far I see
nothing to refute that -- social movements have long taken the form of
networks ("acephalic, segmented and reticulated" as Gerlach & Hine put it
way back in 1970, long before the net, or in other words, decentralized,
locally based and linked horizontally).

BUT, it is also true that networks can extend transnationally more easily
than ever before, with more instantaneous communication, facilitated by
encryption.  So the image of "individualist adventurism" is not at all
accurate.  It seems quite likely to me that even if the U.S. soon produces
Osama bin Laden's "head on a pole," they will have made future terrorist
incidents (by their own hypocritical, self-serving definition) more rather
than less likely.

The polarization of the world system and ever-increasing inequality,
combined with technological change and the persistence of ideological
"in group-out group" hostilities, of which religious fundamentalism is
but one example, is a sure-fire recipe for ongoing conflict, and the "U.S.
calvary" cannot stop it.

Some medium-range "practical utopia" like the emergence of an EC-centered
powerful U.N. (as sketched in Boswell & Chase-Dunn) carrying out with
"simultaneity" Gert Kohler's "global Keynesian redistribution" is the only
way out.  Humane social democracy (which will not occur through thinking
nice thoughts) or barbarism.

RH