Insight into Bush's 'promising' Middle East

"The LORD will smite you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart;
and you will grope at noon, as the blind man gropes in darkness, and you will not prosper in your ways; but you shall only be oppressed and robbed continually, with none to save you. ........
"You shall be driven mad by the sight of what you see.
Deut 28:28

With the great amount of lies and spin to cover up their failures and deceive the people as to how bad things really are I believe God will make it even more abundantly clear to all American's that we are no longer under His blessing but His curse.
The devious and corrupt leadership, left and right are no longer able to hide the truth so easily.
It's good to hear the truth about what the counterfeit peacemaker president has actually accomplished during his eight year reign instead of all his lies.
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Daniel Pipes

While I like and think well of Bush, I have criticized his response to radical Islam since 2001, his Arab-Israeli policy since 2002, his Iraq policy since 2003 and his democracy policy since 2005. In both 2007 and 2008, I critiqued the shortcomings of his overall Middle East efforts.
Today, I take issue with his claim that the Middle East is more hopeful and more promising than in 2001. Consider some of the ways things have degenerated:
• Iran has nearly built nuclear weapons and appears to be planning for a devastating electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States.
• Pakistan is on its way to becoming a nuclear-armed, Islamist rogue state.
• The price of oil reached an all-time high, only to collapse due to a US-led recession.
• Turkey went from being a stalwart ally to the most anti-American country in the world.
• Iraq remains an albatross (or a pair of shoes?) around America's neck, incurring expenses, fatalities and with an immense potential for danger.
• Rejection of Israel's existence as a Jewish state has become more widespread and virulent.
• Russia has reemerged as a hostile force in the region.
• Democratic efforts have collapsed (Egypt), increased Islamist influence (Lebanon) or paved the way for Islamists to attain power (Gaza).
• The doctrine of preemption has been discredited.
BUSH'S TWO successes, an Iraq without Saddam Hussein and a Libya without WMD, hardly balance out these failures.
One preview is on display in Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President, a major study issued jointly by two liberal lions, the Brookings Institution (founded 1916) and the Council on Foreign Relations (founded 1921). The culmination of an 18-month effort, Restoring the Balance involved 15 scholars, two co-editors (Richard Haass and Martin Indyk), a retreat at a Rockefeller conference center, multiple fact-finding trips and a small army of organizers and managers.
THIS READER is struck by two major deficiencies. First, while the book covers six topics (the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, Iraq, counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation and political and economic development), its specialists have almost nothing to say about Islamism, the most pressing ideological challenge of our time, nor about the Iranian nuclear buildup, the most urgent military danger of our time. They also manage to bypass such issues as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Arab rejectionism of Israel, the Russian danger and the transfer of wealth to energy-exporting states.
Second, the study offers defeatist policy recommendations. "Bring Hamas into the fold" advise Steven Cook and Shibley Telhami, arguing that the terrorist organization be included in a "Palestinian unity government" and be urged to accept the ill-fated Abdullah Plan of 2002. It is hard to imagine a single more counterproductive policy in the Arab-Israeli theater.