In 2006 Hamas won the elections, that Bush had idiotically championed, with a vote of 44.45%, compared to Fatah’s 41.43%, turnout was estimated to be no higher than 76%. Hamas and Fatah then formed a national unity government that lasted one year, until Bush backed an attempted coup:

Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says.

The botched plan has rendered the dream of Middle East peace more remote than ever, but what really galls neocons such as Wurmser is the hypocrisy it exposed. “There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he says. “It directly contradicts it.”

Enter the Devil you know:

A clue comes toward the end of the video, which was found in a Fatah security building by Hamas fighters last June. Still bound and blindfolded, the prisoners are made to echo a rhythmic chant yelled by one of their captors: “By blood, by soul, we sacrifice ourselves for Muhammad Dahlan! Long live Muhammad Dahlan!”

There is no one more hated among Hamas members than Muhammad Dahlan, long Fatah’s resident strongman in Gaza. Dahlan, who most recently served as Abbas’s national-security adviser, has spent more than a decade battling Hamas. Dahlan insists that abu Dan was tortured without his knowledge, but the video is proof that his followers’ methods can be brutal.

Bush has met Dahlan on at least three occasions. After talks at the White House in July 2003, Bush publicly praised Dahlan as “a good, solid leader.” In private, say multiple Israeli and American officials, the U.S. president described him as “our guy.”

Rather than see if a unity government of two bad actors, antagonistic to each other, could be forced to work together thus each checking the other’s worst inclinations, we sought to destabilize the newly formed Palestinian government almost immediately. And the worst part is it completely backfired, the whole thing. By demanding elections be held without understanding the sentiment we legitimized Hamas. Then by attempting a coup to remove Hamas from power we cemented them into complete control of Gaza. A complete and utter cluster fuck.