Will the Jihad Ever Catch Fire?

To Osama bin Laden and the other radical militants of jihad, Sept. 11, 2001, was a gigantic provocation, a great blast meant to free their movement from the spiral of political decline that had ensnared it since the early 1990s. But if the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon demonstrated remarkable technological, financial and practical agility, they did not achieve the political expansion the militants had sought--quite the contrary. The extremist supporters of the U.S. attacks have posted a disastrous record during the past year. In their principal objective--to mobilize the Muslim masses behind a victorious jihad that would...