From the moment they occurred, the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 were seen as inaugurating a new age of asymmetric violence and warfare. President George W. Bush described the war on terror that followed as a generational conflict.
Yet, for all the transformations it produced, Al-Qaeda and Islamic militancy more broadly have, in my view, receded within a decade. Not so much because it was defeated on the battlefield but because it was unable to gain much support among Muslims. When popular uprisings swept the Arab world in the early 2010s, protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, and elsewhere in the region took to the streets not in…
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