[Semper Paratus]

Conventional wisdom and the foreign policy establishment have never advocated the US push democracy in the Middle East and have said that it would have been impossible to do it in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

It's amazing when you begin to contemplate how staggeringly inaccurate "conventional wisdom", at least, as reflected by the predominate strain of thought expressed by the press corps and political/military analysts, has been over the course of the past year.

The Shia', contrary to the baseless assertions made by innumerable media pundits, did not vote in lockstep with the desires of Ayatollahs Sistani or Abdel-Aziz Hakim...

The people of Iraq turned out in dramatic numbers, despite the recurrent threats of violence and political intimidation...

Finally, the seemingly ubiquitous danger of civil strife erupting among Iraq's various ethnic/tribal/religious sects has not yet come to fruition.

The naysayers have gotten it wrong in almost every respect, up to this point in time.

Why they continue to make these prognostications-which are never borne out by the realities on the ground-is beyond my comprehension.