Is the international community at last making progress in imposing some kind of order on the chaotic and violent Middle East — at least in Iraq, if not in Syria?

Even to pose the question sounds premature when women and children are being bombed and blow to bits in Aleppo, when the Islamic State group continues its grisly executions, when Russia and America are bickering bitterly about who destroyed a major aid convoy, and when 10 percent of Iraq is still under IS control.

Yet the Iraqi authorities seem confident that the city of Mosul, IS' major trophy citadel, can be recaptured before the end of the year and everywhere in Iraq there are signs that IS is on the run and getting desperate. The Iraqi National Forces, trained and directly supported by both the Americans and the British, are at last beginning to show their mettle after many disappointments.