If you're a neocon, you might see everything that has happened in Iraq and Gaza as exactly what Bush planned all along:
Five years ago, Middle Eastern extremists were killing Israelis and Americans. Today they are killing each other. Why is it that some people persist in claiming that Israel's and America's Middle East policy is a failure?" -- Alan Chamberlain
Never mind all that stuff about cakewalks, natives tossing flowers, getting bin Laden and missions accomplished. Victory and success are fungible concepts; or, to borrow a page from the Rumsfeld handbook of warfare, "you define success as the results you have, not the results you wanted."
While I wouldn't praise Bush for what is going on in Gaza, I don't know that it is fair to blame him, either. The Palestinian Authority was a fragile kleptocracy held together by threats, murders, bribes and a tangle of criminal alliances. The void left by Arafat's death meant that the most primitive elements would step up to the plate to do their thing with or without the nicety of elections. But, that isn't the entire story.
For a range of other opinions, this poster offers three different takes on Gaza, while this poster offers opinions from two who blame the U.S and Israel for events in Gaza and this poster argues that it's partly the doing of Israeli right wingers who do not want to negotiate with the Palestinians for a two-state solution. Among the array of opinions offered, I suspect that events are generally interpreted to confirm the interpreter's preexisting assumptions and beliefs. It is difficult for people to seriously consider that events may not be best explained by what they already believe about the world.
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