Reply #39: A note of objectivity

[JimInNashville]

Preaching to the converted isn't going to win this election. Converting independents is what will win. The simple truth is, the term "Bush Doctrine" IS AMBIGUOUS!

Check the Wikipedia quote below. As you can see, there are several possible variations of the term Bush Doctrine. Watching the interview, I had to admit my first reaction was to ask myself, "Which aspect of the doctrine is he referring to?" The neocon notion that we should project our system to head off "Islamofascism"? The notion that people who harbor terrorists should be treated as terrorists themselves? Or the notion that we can preemtively attack? I'm quite well informed and simply wasn't sure.

Palin asked for specificity, and had every right to do so. To me she looked slightly shaky, but as a genuine "gotcha," this elephant doesn't really fly.


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The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of United States president George W. Bush, created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The phrase initially described the policy that the United States had the right to treat countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups as terrorists themselves, which was used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan.<1> Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate (used to justify the invasion of Iraq), a policy of supporting democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the spread of terrorism, and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way.<2><3><4> Some of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002.<5>