Last Wednesday, a co-pilot on a Flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv attacked his captain mid-flight with a crash axe, trying to seize the plane and put it into the ground in Israel. A wounded pilot and a planeload of strangers stopped him. Days later, Al Qaeda's propaganda wing praised the attempt by name, invoked September 11 directly, and called for copycat hijackings against American and Israeli aircraft. 

I wrote recently about 25 years since September 11, and three since October 7. I didn't think I'd be writing again so soon about an attempted mass-casualty atrocity that the people cheering it are openly calling a sequel. But here we are. So let me ask the question plainly instead of dressing it up: what, exactly, did we learn? 

I'm starting to think the honest answer is not much. And I'm tired of pretending otherwise for the sake of sounding gracious. 

After September 11, President Bush stood in a mosque and told the country "Islam is peace." I understand the impulse behind it. Nobody wanted ordinary Muslim neighbors paying for what 19 men did. Fine. But 25 years later, I'm done granting that strategy the benefit of the doubt just because the intention sounded nice. A slogan isn't a policy, and........

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