3 Lessons from London

摘要

The name—al-qaeda, the base— hasn't made sense in years, at least not since al-Qaeda training camps were incinerated in the post-9/11 strikes on Afghanistan. But jihad-ism is an especially centrifugal force, flinging adherents across borders until what we still notionally call al-Qaeda exists everywhere and nowhere, more an impulse than an organization. Men and boys with small lives and big hopes for the afterlife visit jihadist websites, meet like-minded rejects at the local mosque, pay a visit to one of the overseas imams known for radical preaching and then—well, no one can say for sure. Some return home—to Lodi, Calif.; to Casablanca; to London-each the site of recently captured jihadist suspects. Others go to Iraq to join the insurgency. Many are captured and killed; others resolve to sleep for a few years before striking. And so al-Qaeda seems—still-both fearsome and diaphanous.