There's not much good news coming out of the broader Middle East these days and so the successful election this past weekend in Pakistan is cause for at least muted elation. It is, after all, the first time in Pakistan's beleaguered 65-year history that a democratically elected government has been replaced by a democratically elected government. So that's the good news. Toss in the fact that the voter turnout, the highest for parliamentary elections in nearly two generations, was spurred upward by women and younger voters, and was not deterred by Taliban attacks, then add that Pakistan does have a remarkably free press and a quite independent judiciary and, obviously, a military that now is willing to let democracy play out -- and things don't look so bad.

The news out of Moscow that Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergay Lavrov are hoping to convene an international conference to seek a negotiated end to the Syrian civil war could signal the most significant American diplomatic accomplishment of recent years. But the fact that The New York Times buried the breakthrough on page 12 shows just how high the hurdles are before any conference gets off the ground, much less finds a solution. Significant outside pressure will be required to produce an arrangement that would involve the attendance of both the government of President Assad as well as a broad coalition of rebels, and an agreement on who would be in a transitional government.