Don't Blame Bush
"They were separated from Israel only by some unimposing barbed-wire fences and by a United Nations deployment even less daunting than the fencing. As we peered through binoculars, an Israeli military officer described the fragile balance of terror that had kept the border relatively calm since Israel's withdrawal from Southern Lebanon six years earlier. Hezbollah menaced the Israeli Galilee with its arsenal of 13,000 rockets, but did not fire them for fear of retaliation from Israeli artillery. Israel didn't attempt to disarm the Hezbollah militia because it didn't want to provoke a rain of missiles."
And:
There are three basic criticisms...Bush encouraged the Arab-Israeli conflict by neglecting the peace process championed by Bill Clinton...
that he failed to directly engage with Syria, Iran, and Hamas, leaving them to their mischief...one hears most often from foreign policy realists, namely that Bush's naive faith in democracy has helped terrorists gain power in both Palestine and Lebanon."

Seems like article provides good summary. So basically, if you are against idea of promoting Democratic govt in Middle east, you might have some shred of argument, but the other two are hogwash. But if you are supporting the last idea of strenghtening or maintain dictorships in Middle east without pressuring from opening up of the middle east. How long do you want to maintain this policy- if not now, when?
I would say that Bush's view seems to be that one our failures is that after the Cold War we did not move fast enough in changing this Cold war policy- and THAT was a factor [not everything, but a factor] in why we suffered from 911.