It's Pavlovian, and in no flattering way: Iraqis take a tremendous leap forward by electing much of their formal interim government themselves, and terrorists detonate car bombs. The men trying to prevent liberal sovereignty in Iraq have motives so base, so animalistic that their fear of democracy could be nothing less than their inability to compete with it.

HOW DEVILS WORK: Wretchard at Belmont Club writes his own Screwtape Letter, only his demons are corporeal and we read an Islamofascist Wormwood's dispatches to, rather than from, his assumed uncle. I often wonder how many of our enemies have twisted sense enough to look further than their next act of slaughter and torment; one risks giving the strongman too much credit by gilding what is really a modern variation on the simple desire to consume others. But Wretchard reminds us that evil men, for whatever superficial motive, seek our destruction and work daily towards its accomplishment.