In light of events over the past several days, this is news we need to hear:

Iraqi authorities detained 50 suspects in connection with an explosion in the Shiite holy city of Najaf that killed at least 54 people and wounded 142, and thousands of mourners attended funerals for the victims on Monday.

Pessimists and liberation opponents are usually driven to assign blame for these attacks to American and Iraqi authorities. But make no mistake: Iraq, and to a lesser extent, Afghanistan, are prime examples of terrorism point-blank, a full-throated, viral onslaught against an open society. There is no longer any Saddamite Mukhabarat, no network of informants, no Babylonian Big Brother tracking every citizen and holding an impenetrable monopoly on the methods and execution of strength through fear. In today's Iraq there is an Allied military force with far-reaching intelligence capabilities but one that inherits the limitations of freeborn men — that is, the inclination to leave most people in peace and quiet — while the Iraqis themselves must welcome the enfranchisement of life based on law and trust but bear its vulnerabilities.

What is apparent from this report and one from Mosul, detailing yet another series of foiled attempts by terrorists to overturn a democratically minded government, is that while Iraqis are not nearly at the full sense and confidence of that new nation they are certainly not helpless. If two-and-a-half score can be arrested within twenty-four hours of a crime, by Iraqis themselves no less, while community leaders mock the perpetrators' obvious designs on internecine strife, the bombing failed. The statement made by terrorists, "You are not your own masters," receives a reply: "You can kill us here and there, but for only so long before you never will again." To make sense of this battle in Iraq, a landscape of subversion that terrorists would rather be right outside of your own front door, we must understand the next six months in terms of that conversation.

PERSPECTIVE: Keep in mind that despite these horrific, high-profile attacks, terrorist activity in general is down to a fraction of what it was before Fallujah was cleaned out, and that there is an entire country rebuilding around local tragedies. From Sadr City to Fallujah to encouraging words from none other than Afghan President Hamed Karzai, Arthur Chrenkoff has more.