Every war has countless beginnings, hundreds of moments pushing toward that first shot fired, the first pulse stilled. For many Americans, the modern conflicts between Islam and the West began on a September day when horrors fell from a blue sky over Manhattan. An Al-Qaeda combatant might date their start back to 1991, when American troops flooded onto Saudi Arabian soil after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. An Iranian government cleric may point to 1953, when a CIA-backed coup toppled the democratically elected prime minister and installed the Shah. A Pakistani jihadi might set the
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