Good help is hard to find...

Mr. Maqdisi’s problem is more homegrown. A new generation of jihadists, many of them less educated and respectful of authority than their elders, has begun taking issue with him. Mr. Maqdisi believes suicide bombing is a legitimate tactic but has said it should not be used indiscriminately, and he has spoken against the sectarian massacres in Iraq. For this he is accused of turning his back on jihad.

In a sense, Mr. Maqdisi can hardly complain, because he did the same thing to his clerical elders when he was young.

“For several decades, there has been a dynamic at work in the radical Sunni Islamist community where each new generation becomes less principled, less learned, more radical, and more violent than the one before it,” said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle East studies at Princeton.

My heart goes out to Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi...attached to a cruise missile. This is your typical leader in Palestine.