The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were an assault as much on America's pop culture as on its people. Islamic radicals' disgust for consumer America runs as deep as their hate of its policies. "We love death. The U.S. loves life," Osama bin Laden famously said after 9/11, but an Afghan militant perhaps made the point better: "The Americans love Pepsi-Cola. We love death." The sweet, decay-promoting fruits of the American pleasure machine are, to fundamentalists, a threat to their way of life as powerful as any aggressor's army.
We should be proud, then, that while ground zero is still being rebuilt,...