DAVID BROOKS WONDERS why prospects in the Middle East look so much better than people expected:

After all, here is a man who staffed his administration with what Juan Cole of the University of Michigan called “pro-Likud intellectuals” who went off “fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv.” Under Bush, the diplomats agreed, the U.S. had inflamed the Arab world and had forfeited its role as an honest broker. . . .

And yet here we are in this hopeful moment. It almost makes you think that all those bemoaners and condemners don’t know what they are talking about. Nothing they have said over the past three years accounts for what is happening now. It almost makes you think that Bush understands the situation better than the lot of them.

Surely not. He’s from Texas.