Photographs and wire reports of Iraqi demonstrations against the hands that saved them are likely to become news over the next days in the chilly vacuum of statelessness - and a temporary rallying cry for anti-liberation voices.

I'm not worried. This is less an Iraqi ambition as it is imported incendiary. The first paragraph says it all:

Tens of thousands of Iraqi Muslims took to the streets of Baghdad after Friday prayers today to demand the departure of U.S. and other foreign troops and the establishment of an Islamic state.

The same Muslim preachers who are flapping their arms about theocracy are exactly the kind who will attempt to teach their flock the same fear with which they regard the United States. A manifestly powerful democracy with a strong divide between politician and pulpit - and the resolve to enforce the same governmental safeguards around the world - is Islamism's greatest threat. I'd sooner find a gold medal Nigerian bobsledding team than would the Bush administration allow Islamofascists - the pumping, twisted heart of Near East terrorism - to take up root in secular, modern Iraq. So the various clerics will rant and rave, taking advantage of a hysteria brewing up in this lawlessness. Mischief from Iran and Syria has already begun - the recent murder of the Shiite clerics in Najaf is clearly the conspired work of the enemy. Twisted Islam is the vein for toxins, and these two unrepentant dictatorships are sure to want Iraqi democracy killed quickly and cleanly.

As I've said before: Iraq is our Normandy. Expect a proverbial Berlin to fight our troops every step of the way.