Charlie Gibson's Gaffe

By Charles Krauthammer
Saturday, September 13, 2008; A17



"At times visibly nervous . . . 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 New York 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. It is utterly different.

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, Gibson 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. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, "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Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror.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 the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President 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 preemptive 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 the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: 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 in his inaugural address that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order 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 the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.

Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption.

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 come out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few other contradictory or conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.

Such is not the case with the Bush doctrine.

Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson.

And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "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 mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.


#ArticleCommentsWrapper {display:block};

__________________
Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

The Bush Doctrine in a nutshell: Fuck over everyone before they can fuck over you, and on the way raise the price of everything so the elites can get paid. And oh yeah, fuck the poor the most!

__________________
Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

BUSH DOCTRINE... aahahah

she is chicken shit... and can't keep it real

McCain - WINNING IS EVERYTHING.. even if it means stabbing your mom in the back

__________________
SeeMoreBuds
HOW TO GROW MARIJUANA - 15LBS IN 80 DAYS
www.SeeMoreBuds.com

gosh i dont like politics :/

__________________
Sit back, relax, and have a swell time.
Yes I said swell
http://www.rollitup.org/image.php?ty...ine=1220255420

So now mothers are sacrosanct? I thought they were fodder for "aspiring " "comedians"?

try and speak directly to the point and use words that a donkey can understand.. rather than a herd of donkeys can hide behind..

thank you

__________________
SeeMoreBuds
HOW TO GROW MARIJUANA - 15LBS IN 80 DAYS
www.SeeMoreBuds.com

How about.....iloveyou.........?

If you find a Bush Doctrine. Post It! Their is no Bush Doctrine. Duhhhh! Just more Bullshit by braindead Obama lovers! Like Charles Gibson and a lot of uninformed Potheads!

that;s a good start.. now look in the mirror and try saying it like you mean it...

__________________
SeeMoreBuds
HOW TO GROW MARIJUANA - 15LBS IN 80 DAYS
www.SeeMoreBuds.com

Vi I watched the interview, and Charlie Gibson OWNED palin.

__________________
The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. United State Constitution, Art. I Sec. 9 Par. 2

"Dissent is the Highest form of Patriotism" -- Howard Zinn