Larison pushes back against the belief that Dubya mellowed after reelection:
Bush’s foreign policy in his second term ran into the limits of American power, and the drain of the Iraq war prevented the administration from pursuing any other spectacularly harmful policies. However, this was also the period when the U.S. foolishly backed elections in Gaza, offered uncritical support to Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon, and enabled a reckless Saakashvili with misleading pledges of support and recognized the independence of Kosovo, both of which eventually led to the August 2008 war. Bush’s foreign policy in his second term was calamitous in its own way, and greater humility is not the characteristic I would ascribe to it.
The Dish 