On the 11th anniversary of 9/11, it is some consolation that the man most responsible for that terrible morning will not be smiling smugly to himself as satellite TV brings to the leafy boulevards of Abbottabad the somber images of New Yorkers commemorating those who perished in the Twin Towers. It provides some psychic satisfaction to all those traumatized by that ghastly day, and the wars that it wrought, that our collective remembrance will not be embittered by the nagging question, “And why is Osama bin Laden still alive and free today?”

But perhaps more important that bin Laden’s own demise is the death of his vision of a ‘global jihad,’ a holy world war pitting Muslims everywhere against infidels everywhere, especially in the...