Society's answer to 9/11 terrorism

The fraction of Americans who wanted to deal with Sept. 11 as acriminal matter, to pursue al-Qaida plotters not militarily, butthrough law, will have a taste of how slow and uncertain that processwould have been when Zacarias Moussaoui, the French citizenconsidered the "20th hijacker'' by the FBI, goes on trial in U.S.District Court in Virginia this fall.

Moussaoui attended flying school with the Sept. 11 terrorists, andauthorities say, would have been the fifth man on the plane thatcrashed into a field in Pennsylvania had not a suspicious flightinstructor reported him. Being in jail at the time of the attacks, hecould not be accused of directly carrying out the crime. So …