The evil genius behind the 2001 murder of 3,000 people, mostly Americans, in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania grinned with vulpine amusement as he arrived in court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this week.

It’s been nearly 20 years since Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s massacre of innocents sparked a “war on terrorism,” but, with savage irony, it is less than a month since America’s defeat in that conflict was made plain by President Joe Biden’s incompetence and helter-skelter retreat. The Taliban, who harbored Osama bin Laden and the rest of KSM’s al Qaeda pals, has reconquered Afghanistan and humiliated the United States, supposedly the world’s preeminent power.