"Crime Pays, Terrorists Find: Group in Europe Smuggles Immigrants and Forges Passports," by Glenn Simpson et. al, Wall Street Journal, 14 April, p. A13.

Since 9/11, the U.S. makes a huge effort on a global scale to shut down the funding mechanisms that support global terror. There is good evidence we are succeeding in many instances, but plenty more loopholes are still being exploited. But here's the even tougher reality of fighting a truly global, networked foe: while fighting the connectivity that globalization spreads they nonetheless exploit that connectivity to make ends meetósomething they can do almost ad infinitum.

So the Journal says "Terrorists have replacements for traditional systems of funding, like Islamic charities." Those replacements include the sort of seam-exploiting activities right on the edge of legitimate activities: would-be immigrants seeking new jobs likewise seek out the smuggling services and forged passports provided by terrorist networks. Being good at that for their own purposes means terrorist networks have a marketable skill set in the global economy. This is classic Mafia territory: they provide services and security for those who cannot go to legitimate authorities for same.

My point in raising this issue is not to dump on current efforts in this Global War on Terrorism, but simply to point out that we'll never dry up all their finances, nor kill enough of their soldiers. These are self-replicating forces that cannot be defeated by overwhelming mass. What we can do, however, is progressively constrict their operating domains: where they hang out, hide out, flourish, recruit, train andómost importantlyówhere they hope to effect real change. None of these groups really want to change life inside the Core, but only to get the Core to abandon particular regions or regimes in the Gap andófurtheróto accept the terrorists' goal of hijacking some particular society and isolating it under their rule.

In the end, the only real way we win this global terrorism is to deny terrorists the disconnected societies they seek to rule, and we do that by connecting those societies up to the global economy and letting the ensuing broadband economic, social, and political connectivity do the rest. Where we wage war is against any forces of disconnectedness: be they non-state actors hoping to hijack some society or some dictator currently keeping his population under his isolating control.

But if you think we can firewall this nation from this violence or hunt down the terrorist sufficiently fast enough to claim some long-term victory, you are kidding yourselfóor buying into Richard Clarke's vision of how to win the GWOT. We will never kill them fast enough nor put up enough walls between our good life and their pain and suffering. It simply will never happen.