Another articel on why Bin Laden will fail along with a nice Karl Marx quote. .

As Karl Marx presciently declared in The Communist Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie [ i.e., us], by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image."

That's what Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda cannot stand, but also what they cannot stand against. It is only a matter of time before the "intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners" represented by bin Laden and his followers will capitulate. Modernization, which is to say westernization, will inevitably smash all cultures that don't accommodate themselves to it. They will be smashed chiefly not by bombs and military force but by the choices of their own peoples, who will turn their backs on the traditions and institutions that have kept them so long ignorant and poor.