'It's a different kind of war,' says Kerry. 'You have to understand it's not the sands of Iwo Jima.' That's true. But Kerry's mistake is in assuming that because it's not Iwo Jima, it's somehow less of a war. Until recently we thought of 'asymmetrical warfare' as something the natives did with machetes against the colonialist occupier. But in fact the roles have been reversed. These days, your average Western power — Germany, Canada, Belgium — is utterly incapable of projecting conventional military might to, say, Saudi Arabia or the Pakistani tribal lands. But a dozen young Saudi or Pakistani males with a little cash, some debit cards and the right phone numbers in their address books can project themselves to Frankfurt, Ottawa or Antwerp very easily and to devastating effect. That's the lesson of 9/11.