Has anyone heard about the fact checking on the Bush Doctrine?

Was your mom trying to say that, since the “Bush Doctrine” was coined by the WSJ, and Sarah Palin doesn’t read newspapers, she shouldn’t have been responsible for the information?

And timely but tragically, Palin cannot explain the legal role of the VP. (Even after she got it wrong the first time.)

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/21/palin-vp-senate/

I’m not sure what your mother thinks that there is to fact check. The Bush Doctrine refers the President’s announcement in his address to Congress and the American people in the wake of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks that the U.S. would “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed the acts and those who harbor them.”
As everyone knows, we subsequently invaded Afghanistan. By articulating this, the President was establishing a rationale or framework for a policy of preventive war.
You can agree or disagree with the President on the merits of the argument or the validity of preventive war, but one cannot deny that it is a shift in the official policy of the U.S. government.

The Bush Doctrine is a departure from the long standing policies of deterrence that generally characterized American foreign policy during the Cold War. Rightly or wrongly, the President was suggesting that our new enemies were not ones that the old strategic paradigm could effectively counter. I don’t think anyone would argue that point.

Perhaps Ms. Palin and your Mother are unfamiliar with the term Doctrine as it is used in scholarship and in cultivating military and foreign policy. It is simply a term that means the key goals or attitudes of a particular policy that are somehow articulated or codified. Our most prominent Presidents have set forth policy objectives which later came to be characterized as Doctrine because of their breaks with previous status quo policy. Think about the Monroe Doctrine which proclaimed that European powers would no longer be allowed to colonize the Americas, or the Truman doctrine of containment which posited checking the spread of Communist influence. Or, more recently, the Eisenhower Doctrine which articulated the idea that the US would use armed forces upon request in response to imminent or actual aggression.

Ms. Palin is not a scholar and perhaps using a term like Doctrine strikes her as effete and intellectual. I’m sure you would agree however, that Presidents probably should have strong policy convictions.

My recollection of the Bush Doctrine is that it began as a policy stating that “the United States had the right to aggressively secure itself from countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups,” but that it 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 potential or perceived threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate” (used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq); a policy of encouraging 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.

This is a very important development in our international policy, which I think anyone in line for the presidency definitely ought to know.

@emily,
I could not have answered the question either but I am not trying to be a heart beat away from the most powerful position on the planet. I want a president (and vice president) who is smarter than me, that has immersed themselves in political affairs, and that understands it, much better than I do!

I guess it was more about calling it THE BUSH DOCTRINE. Had they asked her about the policy itself by explaining, it, perhaps she would have been able to answer. Not that I think she could have articulated it with any intelligence, but still perhaps that is the right wing argument. My mom tells me she gets her news from a “variety of sources” which I assume are weirdo conservative blogs and fox news, and probably the shitty local paper. Thank god for San Francisco! I love my bubble!

I meant to mention that mom lives in a swing state——NH. I’m horrified. She also told me that she gets a kick out of telling anyone who comes to the door that she is voting for their candidate. When I found this out, I called the Dems to tell them to leave her alone!!!!

Don’t be too hard on your Mom. Let her vote as she wishes and you vote as you wish.

Just make sure that YOU vote.

:)

I always vote : ) And unfortunately so does Mom. I am not being too hard on her, we had a discussion yesterday and were just sharing our viewpoints. It didn’t turn nasty or anything. Thanksgiving is going to be very interesting. A vast majority of my family will be voting for McCain (or in my mom’s case “for Palin”). The cool kids will be voting Obama though. Maybe we can do a red table and a blue table instead of adults and kids
: )

from the washington post
that’s what my mom was referring to, she just sent it to me…...

I wouldn’t want Charlie Gibson to be the VP nomination; and I surely wouldn’t want Charles Krauthammer. His last sentence talks about “he {Gibson}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.”

Look at Krauthammer’s bio; he should talk. He had an extraordinary and distinguished intellectuad career (including a Pulizer) and was both nit-picking and showing off in the WP column that emilyrose sent.l

Palin could be the mother of fifteen and I still wouldn’t want her to be in line for the presidency.

Krauthammer in… attended McGill University and obtained an honors degree in political science and economics in 1970. From 1970 to 1971, he was a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford. He later…attended Harvard Medical School. In…. 1972, Krauthammer was paralyzed in a serious diving accident.

Continuing medical studies during his year-long hospitalization, he graduated with his class, earning an M.D. from H M S in 1975, and then began working as a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital. In October 1984, he became board certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

From 1975–1978, Krauthammer was a Resident and then a Chief Resident in Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital. ...
In 1978, Krauthammer quit medical practice to direct planning in psychiatric research for the Jimmy Carter administration, and began contributing to The New Republic magazine. During the presidential campaign of 1980, Krauthammer served as a speech writer to Vice President Walter Mondale.

In 1981, following the defeat of the Carter/Mondale ticket, Krauthammer began his journalistic career, joining The New Republic as a writer and editor. etc.