Bin Laden's soulful, bearded face peers out from T-shirts and posters in a number of countries, quite as if he were the new Che Guevara, the mythic righter of cosmic wrongs. 11 attacks as an Israeli conspiracy, or perhaps a C.I.A. And this worldview turns out to be widely accepted in many places - a worldview that allowed many millions of people to regard the Sept. Al Qaeda upholds a paranoid and apocalyptic worldview, according to which ''Crusaders and Zionists'' have been conspiring for centuries to destroy Islam. Its popularity, which was hard to imagine at first, has turned out to be large and genuine in more than a few countries. Police agents, as I write, seem to be hot on the trail of bin Laden himself, or so reports suggest.
Just this month, one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants was nabbed in Pakistan. Arrests and maneuvers duly occurred and are still occurring. Al Qaeda was driven from its bases in Afghanistan. The terrorist army was thought to be no bigger than a pirate ship, and the newly vigilant police forces of the entire world were going to sink the ship with swift arrests and dark maneuvers.
11, 2001, many people anticipated a quick and satisfying American victory over Al Qaeda.
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