Ever since Samson brought the temple crashing down around his and the Philistines’ heads, we have ricocheted between admiration and hatred of civilian killers of a civilian enemy. Are they the morally tortured terrorists of Camus’s Les Justes, fatally misguided, but reluctantly believing their violence is justified? Or are they the loathsome, amoral losers of Conrad’s The Secret Agent, who want to bomb their way out of their own powerlessness with no thought for their victims?

How, for instance, should we consider 5/11? Religious fanatics plan to strike at the heart of Crown, Church and State. If they succeed, hundreds, maybe thousands, will be massacred. The plot failed; the terrorists are now looked at indulgently. So will we, from the safety conferred by the distance of