Tom Friedman puts a clever tagline on a idea that we've notice popping up with increasing regularity lately. Friedman calls it www.jihad.com, and as you've probably guessed it's in reference to the success that extremists groups and aggressive religious movements seem to be having in using the Internet and other technologies to network with new recruits and organize advanced actions. We mentioned it last week in the context of the Taliban recruitment of some Virginia young folk. The New Yorker recently had a piece that covered how the violent Somali youth group Shabaab recruited some young people from Minnesota via Islamist web sites. Friedman is worried, and calls on us to pay as much attention to "Virtual Afghanistan" and to the real one:

Let’s not fool ourselves. Whatever threat the real Afghanistan poses to U.S. national security, the “Virtual Afghanistan” now poses just as big a threat. The Virtual Afghanistan is the network of hundreds of jihadist Web sites that inspire, train, educate and recruit young Muslims to engage in jihad against America and the West. Whatever surge we do in the real Afghanistan has no chance of being a self-sustaining success, unless there is a parallel surge -- by Arab and Muslim political and religious leaders -- against those who promote violent jihadism on the ground in Muslim lands and online in the Virtual Afghanistan.

Friedman draws a pictures of an immense web of malice that is the real enemy of American interests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. His rhetoric might be overwrought, but the subject is still relevant. It's still a very open question whether the United States government and American civil society is paying adequate attention to the battle for hearts, minds, and bodies that is happening online, all over the world, at every minute of the day. (Photo credit: Todd Huffman)