We're all doctrinally impure
I think Fallows is one of the smartest and wisest guys out there (I didn’t always think this, but he has worn me down by being so damn right all the time), but I think he sounds a little overwrought on the Palin-“Bush Doctrine” dust-up. I follow foreign policy things pretty closely, and as a former political theory student and teacher I have a special fetish for all things doctrinal, and I wouldn’t have matched “Bush Doctrine” to preemptive or preventive or anticipatory war. And I thought about this stuff a lot at the time. I remember thinking that cooking up a doctrinal justification for invading Iraq was stupid, but I remember the doctrine I thought was so gratuitous as “the Doctrine of Preventive War,” not “the Bush Doctrine.” It seemed dumb to turn what was in all likelihood sui generis into a declared precedent, a matter of principle. (And the administration’s love of the language of principle in geopolitics, of never shutting up about it, was already seeming like a bad indulgence – foreign policy as culture war. I thought that was the Bush Doctrine: never shutting up about it.) Also, it seemed needlessly goading. It picked a fight that wasn’t important enough to pick. But now Charles Krauthammer has spoken, and it appears that Sarah Palin’s interrogator Charlie Gibson was wrong, too. Of the many doctrines Bush has delivered himself of over the last seven years, he identified the wrong one as The Bush Doctrine. Krauthammer enunciated the first Bush Doctrine in 2001. It was a sort of meta-doctrine, encompassing all subsequent Bush Doctrines. And the meta-principle established in this this ur-Doctrine of Bush – as Krauthammer reminds us – is that we should, in all things, be needlessly goading.
I joke. I think there are massive substantive problems with Krauthammer’s principle of unilateralism, which have nothing to do with the moral imperatives of multilateralism. And I think that Sarah Palin’s answer to Gibson was disturbing for the intellectual void it revealed. And, Palin’s tendency, when pushed into areas of obvious ignorance, to recur to a language of pugnacious moralism, is, as Ross points out, depressingly familiar. In fact, she and Charlie Gibson make a similar mistake, projecting a specious categorical clarity onto what is actually a huge mess.
<p>I am going to outsource my response to Daniel Larison on this (http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/09/12/the-bush-doctrine)one:
“Reihan complains that critics of Palin on her Bush Doctrine answer probably could not define it very well, either. Whether that is true of other critics or not, I cannot say, but before taking a stab at it I will reiterate my point that the existence of divergent interpretations of the Doctrine does not excuse not knowing anything about it. Clearly, Palin knew nothing, so the fact that other people disagree about what exactly falls under this Doctrine is neither here nor there when discussing Palin’s answers. Indeed, the argument made in her “defense” is that Gibson also got it wrong. The telling part of the interview, then, is when Palin agreed with the definition Gibson gave, which Palin’s defenders are insisting was wrong. She didn’t know this definition was wrong, because she had no idea what it was. So what is the right definition?”
— Joseph · Sep 13, 10:29 PM · #
The Bush Doctrine, as articulated also by Dr. K and that troglidyte Jonah Goldberg, is the Manifest Destiny of Judeo-xian style Democracy.
That somehow, if we remove the substrate that nutures terrorism and carefully tend our little sprouts of bushian democracy, democracies will thrive and spread like knapweed to other contiguous nationstates.
Palin is a cudlip.
Only the l33ts would be cognizant of Bushs plan to democratize the world.
— matoko_chan · Sep 13, 10:38 PM · #
btw the Bush Doctrine is an abject failure.
It only inspires the neighbors to get out the weedkiller.
What is a success, is the social-networking-bricolage-grassroots Petraeus/Kilcullen model.
Which McCain is applaingly ignorant of since he thot the surge caused the Anbar successes.
— matoko_chan · Sep 13, 10:49 PM · #
She had obviously never heard of it. Which suggest that she is not interested in foreign policy. Not many people are interestedin foriegn policy, but people who aspire to high political office—as Palin apparently have—tend to be interested in foreign policy. After reading that piece about in her in sat.‘s NY Times, it appears to me that she is mostly interested in power and position. Doesn’t really have any plans about what she wants to do with it. I think listening to her talk you can see that she has adopted certain “governmental” phrases, which she combines in different pattern to say realy basic things. She like the word progress and a verb. As in “I am interested in progressing our economy.” Watch the interviews and see if you agree. This is like someone—I have been there many times—learning certain buzz words to use in a job interview, like proactive, or interface. When you resort to the strategy of trying to use certain buzz words, you are tying to fool you interviewers about your qulifications. And she has been talking like this for a long time. When someone is really intersted and qualified for a particular job the buzz words come naturally, becasue they have been internailzed. If Palin was really interested in governance, instead of the trappings, then her politician speech would be way more natural. She wouldn’t be using all these crazy buzz words to fake competence. Talking about governence would hyave been second nature becasue she would have been involved in high school government and got a political science or history degree and then gone to law school and read a lot of Foreign Policy Magazines, etc. For me, this whole thing has turned into one of those very painful, impossible absurd jokes. Something that if you saw it in a movie you would be amused, but, you would think that the writers were overly broad in their satire. I predict that the Waiting For Guffman guy is going to do a Palinesque story next, and that it will be hilarious.
— cw · Sep 13, 10:50 PM · #
jeezus-H-christ-inna-handcart!
Brooks is right.
The Republicans are intellectually incapable of governance.
— matoko_chan · Sep 13, 10:52 PM · #
cw Palin is giving “pageant answers”.
— matoko_chan · Sep 13, 10:54 PM · #
AND if Palin was really a “good” mother she would have waited until Bristol got married to explode onto the national scene.
it would have taken all of a week.
cw is correct, she is only interested in the trappings of power.
the beauty queens crown if u will.
— matoko_chan · Sep 13, 10:57 PM · #
“Pagent answers.” Most excellent, Motoko_chan. So are you a girl?
— cw · Sep 14, 01:25 AM · #
http://www.crooksandliars.com/Media/Download/32729/1/McCain2_91108.wmv
— Freddie · Sep 14, 03:42 AM · #
Thanks, Freddie. I had to stop it on this one: “She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States.” I couldn’t go on. I have admired McCain.
— Matt Feeney · Sep 14, 04:24 AM · #
Yes I’m a grrl and and a libertarian.
Palin believes the State owns a citizen’s body even in the case of rape or incest…… she is not only a traitor to our shared sex but a traitor to liberty and personal freedom.
— matoko_chan · Sep 14, 01:30 PM · #
now that is worth another thot….since team mccain knew bristol was 5 months pregnant and unmarried…and surely they knew how the tabloids would react….why not have a civil ceremony the week before the Palin pick? could it be…that team mccain cynically put poor Bristol out there as a stalking horse to frame the narrative that the media was out to savage Palin and elicit sympathy for her?
that would be truly vile if Palin went along with it.
Medea…..she that eateth her own children.
— matoko_chan · Sep 14, 01:39 PM · #