...This is, of course, what certain American and European analysts have been saying since 9/11: if we just stop bothering them, all this will go away. But this founders on history. Before Iraq, before Afghanistan, before the founding of Israel, before the founding of the USA, there was still jihad. If Osama didn't have the grievances he trots out, he would have others: they are mere pretexts, as changeable as stage sets. Jihadists like to point to the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 as the source of all their woes and the cause of their struggle today -- but there were other jihads, and other pretexts, long before 1924...