Pakistan, July 8 -- In a move as stark as it is revealing, the United States has revoked the terrorist designation of Syria's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate once central to its war-on-terror narrative. The group's leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, once the subject of a multi-million dollar bounty, is now quietly shaking hands with U.S. diplomats. The bounty? Gone. The terror label? Lifted. The framing? Rewritten. When a jihadist group begins to serve American interests, the past becomes optional.

Many would argue that this is a textbook display of how Western powers construct and dismantle moral categories at the moment geopolitics requires them. It is also proof-as if more were needed-that the so-called "rules-based inte...