Punching Bag?

Edward Luttwak, in attempting to explain the sheer lack of further terrorism in the wake of 9/11 and the Battle for Iraq, comes up with this as his first:

One explanation for the absence of microterrorism is that the Islamist movement in general is in decline, probably because it is now associated with defeat from Afghanistan to Palestine, or at least a persistent failure to win, as in Chechnya and Kashmir. Islam as a faith was originally validated by victory, hence the defeats of the Islamists everywhere imply that they themselves are not favoured by God.