In the course of my article on NRO today about 9/11 and the response to it, I touch on the inability (and unwillingness) of those running the West to confront the full extent of the challenge they faced.

Justifiable optimism after the Soviet collapse mutated into a teleological conviction that the way had been cleared for an ultimately irresistible ascent to a peaceful, prosperous, and more democratic world. Militant Islam’s reworking of religious war is a phenomenon that much of the Western establishment not only finds bewildering but also continues, even after 9/11, to deny or downplay. It simply cannot be reconciled with its belief that the great ideological struggles of the past are over, and it mocks their orthodoxies about multiculturalism, immigration, and the interplay between the two.

Justifiable optimism after the Soviet collapse mutated into a teleological conviction that the way had been cleared for an ultimately irresistible ascent to a peaceful, prosperous, and more democratic world.

Militant Islam’s reworking of religious war is a phenomenon that much of the Western establishment not only finds bewildering but also continues, even after 9/11, to deny or downplay. It simply cannot be reconciled with its belief that the........

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