Sarah Palin and the
Bush Doctrine
Article added on September 13, 2008
The Bush Doctrine
What the heck is the
“Bush Doctrine”? It is true that the governor of Alaska has no foreign and
defense policy experience. But Sarah Palin was right to ask ABC's Charles Gibson what he
meant. There was no need for condescending Charlie to do as if poor Palin
could not grasp the obvious answer. He should have been more specific from
the start, and when he became more specific, it became clear that he
had a limited vision of the Bush Doctrine.
Charles Gibson asked:
“Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?”
Sarah Palin:
“In what respect, Charlie?”
Gibson:
“The Bush - well, what do you - what do you interpret it
to be?” Palin:
“His world view?”
Gibson:
“No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated in September 2002,
before the Iraq war.” Palin:
“I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is
rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on
destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There
have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of
American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes
opportunity to do things better.”
Charlie was unsatisfied and defined it himself:
“The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have
the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a
preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack
us. Do you agree with that?”
Palin:
“Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence
that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have
every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the
obligation, the duty to defend.”
Dear Charlie, if that was all there is
to the so-called Bush Doctrine, the situation today would not be so bad as
it is. The Bush Doctrine also seems to include the right to abduct
people in foreign countries and torture them. Torture gets redefined.
Waterboarding is no longer torture. Some freaks might argue that American
torture is different from Saddam Hussein's torture. But since when does
Saddam set the standard for the civilized world? Under the Bush Doctrine, to
ignore human rights, to ignore national and international law becomes a
common practice. As an occupying power, the United States had to guarantee
law and order in the occupied territory. Instead, the United States publicly
announced that it was not up to the U.S. military to stop the widespread
looting in Iraq. To ignore advice and stick to a failed strategy is another
trait of the Bush Doctrine. Already in 2004 - check my articles of
May and
November 2004 - it was clear that additional troops were needed in Iraq.
Some 100,000 people have been killed and hundreds of billions of dollars
wasted because dilettantes were and are running the White House and the
Pentagon. The Bush Doctrine also includes that states that harbor terrorists
should be treated no differently than terrorists themselves. The United
States act unilaterally if needed. NATO allies are not consulted. And the
list goes on and on In short, Charles Gibson has a limited idea of what the
“Bush Doctrine” is. There
are many elements to it. To reduce it to preemptive strikes is reductive.
There is no single paper defining the Bush Doctrine. It may not be clear to
President Bush aka the Torturer himself what it includes. It surely
comprises incompetence and the absence of alternative plans. [added on
September 13, 2008 at 15:55 Riga time: in fairness to George W. Bush, let's
add that the Bush doctrine also includes the expansion of freedom around the
world].
Earmarks
Regarding earmarks and the Bridge To Nowhere, Sarah Palin had to admit that
she first had supported the project before sinking it, when it had already
drowned. Once in office, Governor Sarah Palin understood the problem and
began scaling them down. Her predecessor, Frank Murkowski had last submitted
63 earmark requests for a total of $350 million. In her first year, she
reduced them to 52 totaling $256 million and, for 2008, she asked for 31
earmarks valued at $197 million. She moves in the right direction. Her
meeting with John McCain in early 2008 has probably convinced her further
that this is the right path to go. In the ABC interview she clearly
supported McCain's plan to eliminate pork. As a mayor of a small town, she
had been an avid pork seeker, totaling $27 million worth of earmarks in her
career. As a mayor, you want of course free money to improve the
infrastructure in your city. But she seems to have learned the lesson that
this is the wrong way to improve your city.
As for the overall picture, as positive as this fight against earmarks and,
therefore, corruption is, we are talking about pork bills of about $35
billion to $65 billion in recent years in the United States. A large part of
these earmarks are tied to foreign aid to strategic allies or friends,
including Israel and Egypt. The pork in 2008 that can be eliminated is
estimated at some $18 billion. The U.S. Federal Budget for the fiscal year
2007 foresaw spending of $2,730 billion and a deficit of $162 billion in
2007; the budget deficit for 2008 is estimated to increase to $410 billion.
In short, both the McCain and the Obama camp have not come up yet with a
convincing plan of how to balance the budget - and all of that before Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac ended up under state control, before the U.S. has
officially gone into a recession (which seems likely now) and before the
credit crunch and mortgage meltdown has yet spilled over into the looming
credit card crisis (U.S. citizens are highly indebted).
The Chosen, Barack Obama, looked for the first time likeable and sincere in
the two interviews he gave recently to O'Reilly on Fox and to Letterman on
his show. Obama's problem seems to be that he always wants to look
presidential, lecturing people in his speeches. Once he renounces on his
Holy Obamaness, he is a guy one can have a discussion with.
However, the talk with Letterman also revealed once again why you cannot
vote for Obama: he stressed that his government would create jobs. He still
has no clue about what the government does and what the economy is.
Stick with John McCain and free trade. With the Democrats, you might end up
with another New Deal.
David M.
Kennedy admitted that the New Deal did not end the depression, World War II
did. In the 1930s, the United States and Europe opted for protectionism,
with disastrous results for the world economy. In the electoral campaign,
Obama repeatedly pandered to protectionist industrial worker, subsidy
seeking farmers and NAFTA critics. That is no change we can believe in.
