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For decades U.S. Presidents have tried to make headway in the mideast. Under GWB, it’s happening. Per Charles Krauthammer:
While no one was looking, something historic happened in the Middle East. The Palestinian intifada is over, and the Palestinians have lost.
This is likely to be more than just the end of the intifada itself:
The end of the intifada does not mean the end of terrorism. There was terrorism before the intifada and there will be terrorism to come. What has happened, however, is an end to systematic, regular, debilitating, unstoppable terror—terror as a reliable weapon. At the height of the intifada, there were nine suicide attacks in Israel killing 85 Israelis in just one month (March 2002). In the past three months there have been none.
...Arafat failed, spectacularly. The violence did not bring Israel to its knees. Instead, it created chaos, lawlessness and economic disaster in the Palestinian areas. The Palestinians know the ruin that Arafat has brought, and they are beginning to protest it. He promised them blood and victory; he delivered on the blood.
This coincides with the dramatic release of the Iraqi people from torture, oppression, and dictatorship, and the introduction of democracy to a leading Islamic nation—a significant event in world history.
On the domestic front, analysts are forecasting the best economy in 20 years:
...many analysts are forecasting that the overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, will grow by 4.6 percent or better this year, the fastest in two decades.
There were strong 4.5 percent growth rates in 1997 and 1999, when Bill Clinton was president and the country was in the midst of a record 10-year expansion.
But if this year’s growth ends up a bit faster than that, it will be the best since the economy roared ahead at a 7.2 percent rate in 1984, a year when another Republican president Ronald Reagan was running for re-election.
“We are moving into a sweet spot for the economy with interest rates not too high, jobs coming back and business investment providing strength,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Bank One in Chicago, who is predicting GDP growth of 4.8 percent this year.
It’s one of the most successful Presidencies in decades. Big media and the leadership of the left wish to suppress the news, but even they have reason to celebrate these important advances in their own circumstances, and the circumstances of all Americans.
