Bush Doctrine: From the man who "Coined the Phrase"

[DarrinS]

This was posted on a message board I'm a member of

Charlie Gibson's Gaffee

by Charles Krauthammer

"Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of `anticipatory self-defense.'"

New York Times, Sept. 12

Informed her?

Rubbish.

The Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine.

In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today.

He asked Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?"

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, he grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term.

The first usage of the term may have been when conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer used the term in February 2001 to refer to the president's unilateral approach to national missile defense well before September 11th.

In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of The Weekly Standard led, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine.

Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to Congress nine days later, Bush declared: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror -- first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan -- became the essence of the Bush Doctrine.

Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq War was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of pre-emptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.

It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of Bush foreign policy and the one that most distinctively defines it: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world.

It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden ... to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.

If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about Bush's grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda.

Not the Gibson doctrine of pre-emption.

Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.

Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.

Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed "doctrines" in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines, which came out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.

Such is not the case with the Bush doctrine.

Yes, Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted.

In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the phenom {Sarah Palin} who presumes to play on their stage.

[boutons_]

"Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Gibson"

which one is runnig for VP?

[Mr. Peabody]

Ha. This wasn't an issue where she knew too much.

She looked completely flummoxed when he asked that question. Then when he asked "What does it mean to you?" she responded "His world view?" and then, went on to talk about how great elections are.

She was dancing because she had no idea how to respond.

Maybe Krauthammer needs to reprimand McCain as well. He knew what it was.

[Yonivore]

.

[PixelPusher]

Gibson offered Palin opportunities to correct his McCain-like simplicity regarding the Bush Doctrine and put her crazy-smart, multi-fold understanding of it out there for the world to see when he asked "How do you interpret it?" and "...as I understand it...do you agree with this?"

[Mr. Peabody]

From The National Review.....

Palin’s Performance—Fine, But…

[Rich Lowry]

My take (and I didn't see the bits that aired on 20/20 or Nightline last night, although I read the transcript) was that she survived. That's all she had to do. Politically, everyone was grading her on a pass/fail, and she passed. No gaffes, not that much to fuel damaging follow-on conversation. She's likable even when she's at her least authoritative. Most people, I believe, are rooting for her, and she was helped in the post-game by the incredible scorn directed at her by Charlie Gibson. But this was a merely adequate performance. The foreign-policy session was a white-knuckle affair. She barely got through it and showed no knowledge more than an inch deep. What she did demonstrate was amazing self-possession. She somehow bluffed her way through the Bush doctrine question. Gibson apparently didn't want to go into full "gotcha" territory by asking flat-out if she knew what it is. And then he muddled things further with his dubious definition of it, so she was never truly nailed and there was enough ambiguity there for conservatives to defend her. The fact still remains that she very likely didn't know any of the possible definitions of the Bush doctrine. I can't imagine if Obama had picked Gov. Tim Kaine and he had had a similar moment, conservatives would have rushed to say that the Bush doctrine is just too amorphous and complicated for him to know anything about it. Palin seemed weak on economic and budgetary policy too, talking in the vaguest generalities. She was much better, and positively good, on the social issues—which are dear to her and she's thought about—and anything having to do with her personally or with her record in Alaska. She was magnificent on the Iraq-prayer question. This tends to suggest she'll be as strong on the national issues, once she's truly conversant with them. I hope she got up from the foreign policy session and said to her aides, "Dammit. That wasn't good enough and I'm not letting it happen again. I'm not going to allow myself to be so under-prepared for another high-profile interview again." Of course, she has a tremendous amount of material to master in a short period of time. What she has to do is the equivalent of Charlie Gibson or any of the rest of us having to answer questions about pipeline policy in Alaska on a moment's notice. I understand how we all want to be protective of her—I feel the same impulse—but let's not be patronizing. I believe the truly pro-Palin position is to think she can, should, and will do better than this.

09/13 10:14 AM

[PixelPusher]

I understand how we all want to be protective of her—I feel the same impulse—but let's not be patronizing.

wow.

[Anti.Hero]

Palin is owning Gibson. If that dumb mother er hounded Obama like he is doing to Palin, asking her questions, interrupting her to take her on tangents, then being rude and telling her to get back to the orig question....

He asks her a ing question three times in a row. When the do they ever do that to that stumbling idiot obama.
What a joke.

You fools going over Palin's words with a fine toothed comb are not the only ones. People do that to empty suit Obama too.

[Wild Cobra]

When will you guys give me a reason to drop the word "LIB ?"

You guys are truely re ed. So full of bias you cannot see the truth in a matter.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're all just a bunch of slimeballs. Throwing them over and over, "HOPEing" one of them will stick.

What's going to happen now? You guys are scraping the "Bottom of the Barrell." Will you guys start "CHANGing" tactics to finding truth rather than lies about here?

Good luck. The demoncraps have messed this up so bad now with continual lies and propaganda. They have "Cried Wolf" too many times now. Even if you find something real. Nobody with half a brain will believe it!

[Mr. Peabody]

When will you guys give me a reason to drop the word "LIB ?"

I'll give you a reason - it makes you sound like an idiot.

Do you want another?