The Point Is, Palin Didn't Know Any Of Them

Dear Chuckles: the point isn't that Sarah Palin wasn't sure which "Bush Doctrine" Charles Gibson meant. It's that she clearly didn't know what it was by any definition. It's not even clear she knew that there was a "Bush Doctrine" until Gibson asked her that question.

As the always excellent James Fallows points out, Palin clearly knows less about foreign affairs than someone who simply follows the news reasonably closely.

And, Chuckles, let's look at those four "Bush Doctrines" you listed. The first, in June 2001, originated from you. But few besides your devoted fans ever heard of it, so can we dispense with that?

The last one you give, "the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world," has long since been laughed out of the public dialogue. Bush has completely abandoned his earlier, exceedingly modest attempts to nudge authoritarian allies towards democracy or even towards less repression of critical speech. They were clearly window dressing at the time, but they gulled those who wanted to be gulled (not naming any names, Chuckles) that Bush's "behave, or I'll ram 'democracy' down your throat" approach to the world was part of a broader push for actual democracy, rather than a transparently flimsy justification for saber-rattling and war.

So nobody takes that one seriously anymore, and the idea that "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 the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration" is total bullshit. Nobody with any connection to the real world would assume such a thing.

You might, Chuckles, but few have accused you of being particularly tethered to the real world.

The second one, the "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists...[f]rom this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime" doctrine from just after 9/11/01, was (your choice) superseded by the third Bush Doctrine you name, or died a quiet death when Pakistan became Osama bin Laden's safe harbor, which it remains to this day.

The third one, the one used to justify the Iraq war, was of course the one that Gibson was referring to: the notion that we could initiate preventive war against another nation, well before there was any reason to believe they constituted an imminent threat to any other country. That one was not only used to justify the Iraq invasion, but was also alive and well last year when the Bush Administration was saber-rattling at Iran. The threat from Iran wasn't going to be imminent during the remainder of the Bush Administration, but factions within that Administration (can you say Cheney? I knew you could!) wanted to bomb, bomb Iran anyway.

So even if we assumed that Palin actually had any sort of clue about the Bush Doctrine, that's the one she would have had to consider the operative one.

But she obviously had no clue at all. The question implicit in Palin's confused look wasn't "which Bush Doctrine?" but "there's something called a Bush Doctrine?"

Give it up, Chuckles.

And you too, Michael Abramowitz.

Another Day, Another Disingenious AEI 'Scholar'

Why, exactly, does the WaPo give op-ed space (and legitimacy) to disingenious nutcases like the AEI's Michael Rubin?

Bush has been a polarizing figure, but most senators realize that partisanship should never trump national security. In early 2007, evidence mounted that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was planning terrorist activities in Iraq. An August 2007 National Intelligence Estimate found that "Iran has been intensifying aspects of its lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants" and that "Explosively formed penetrator (EFP) attacks have risen dramatically." The next month, the Senate considered a bipartisan amendment to designate the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, an important step to aid nonviolent efforts to deny it funds and financing. Biden was one of only 22 senators to vote against it. "I voted against the amendment to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization because I don't trust this administration," he said. Distrust of the U.S. president is the nature of politics, but skepticism about foreign dictators and their Brown Shirts is the backbone of judgment.

Look, we know what the game was here, Mike. Our military had every bit of authority it needed to respond to terrorists in Iraq. What it didn't have was the authority to hit Iran. The purpose of this designation was to give them Congressional cover if they should choose to do so, but without the public spotlight that a debate over a formal AUMF resolution would have brought with it.

Because either the Revolutionary Guard is an arm of the Iranian government, or it isn't. Presumably it is. If so, then declare Iran itself a terrorist state, not just the Revolutionary Guard, and if you want to bomb-bomb-Iran, have the guts to say so, and push for an AUMF. Don't dump on better men than yourself because they had the guts to say 'no' to such a chickenshit approach. Don't pretend that this was simply about calling a spade a spade, because it damned sure wasn't.