Not afraid to look stupid

Stentorian war booster Victor Davis Hanson in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd, alt. free link):

Almost before the golden shards of the mosque hit the pavement, pundits wrote off the war as lost -- as we heard the tired metaphors of "final straw" and "camel's back" mindlessly repeated. The long-anticipated civil strife among Shiites and Sunnis, we were assured, was not merely imminent, but already well upon us. Then the great civil war sort of fizzled out; our own frenzy subsided; and now exhausted we await next week's new prescription of doom -- apparently the hyped-up story of Arabs at our ports.

Except that:

Associated Press
February 28, 2006 5:46 p.m.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Sunnis and Shiites traded bombings and mortar fire against mainly religious targets in Baghdad well into the night Tuesday, killing at least 68 people a day after authorities lifted a curfew that had briefly calmed a series of sectarian reprisal attacks.

Indeed, it looks like a decision was made that Tuesday would be the day to declare that major combat operations have ceased in the latent Iraqi civil war; at National Review's The Corner:

IRAQ: BACK FROM THE BRINK [Rich Lowry]

Here are a couple of good back-from-the-brink pieces in the Washington Post ...
The civil war that has been averted would be a catastrophe on all levels.