Jonah Goldberg, in his comparison of Arab national socialism with Nazism, both being latecomers to urban industrial societies (although I would argue with the idea that Arab societies have real gotten there yet), notes:

The economics are of course not identical � in part because the National Socialists, or more fairly put the nationalist socialists in Arab countries, gained power and held on to it, while the Nazis only ruled for twelve years. But it is not outlandish to say that Arab societies are undergoing an upheaval not entirely dissimilar to what Germany went through in the years leading up to World War II.

It occurred to me that the Nazis might have held onto power longer if they hadn't tried to conquer the rest of Europe, causing Russia, England and the U.S. to unite against them and destroy them. The Arabs haven't tried that, but al Qaeda is the logical extention of a fundamentalist agenda hearkening back to a time when "jihad" meant bringing the entire world into subjection, i.e. islam. To the extend it is supported by Muslims worldwide, it can only succeed in the way, leading to another world war greater than the last one and more devastating to Islam than any defeat it has yet suffered. We can only hope that there is enough sanity in the Muslim world to lead it away from such an outcome, because it has nowhere near the industrial capacity to compete in such a contest. In fact, this medieval orthodoxy works powerfully against it, by disdaining modernism and "infidel" education. It may have more manpower; it may even use nukes, but it doesn't have enough of them to survive such a battle with anything resembling a civilization.