Article 5 Of The North Atlantic Treaty (Important Read For The Coming Palin Bashing)

After her superfluous non answer on the Bush Doctrine,

No, she answered a fool according to his folly, by asking for clarification of his ~~superfluous~~ disingenuous non-question, as demonstrated by the following.

Some of the poorly informed and un-objective may try to muddy the water by saying that there were other Bush Doctrines or that the Bush Doctrine will end after his term. Not true.

While it is referred to as the Bush Doctrine, Pre-emption, and the justification for pre-emption, is found in the Phase 2 report of the Hart-Rudman Commission report, published before Bush entered office. Similarly, the Phase 1 report, published before the 2000 elections, recommended creation of DHS.

Except that what Charlie Gibson defined as the Bush Doctrine was not the same as his own previous definition. One may then reasonably infer that Charlie Gibson was either poorly informed and unobjective about his own previous statements of the Bush Doctrine, or that he was trying to muddy the waters by being disingenuous and laying a trap for her, a trap which, as will be seen, he proceeded to fall into himself.

"Gibson should of course have said in the first place what he understood the Bush Doctrine to be--and specified that he was asking a question about preemption. Palin was well within bounds to have asked him to be more specific. Because, as it happens, the doctrine has no universally acknowledged single meaning. Gibson himself in the past has defined the Bush Doctrine to mean "a promise that all terrorist organizations with global reach will be found, stopped and defeated"--which is remarkably close to Palin's own answer.
Consider what a diversity of views on the meaning of the Bush Doctrine can be found simply within the archives of ABC News itself:

September 20, 2001
PETER JENNINGS: . . . Claire, the president said at one point, 'From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.' Should we be taking that as the Bush doctrine? CLAIRE SHIPMAN reporting: I think so, Peter,
September 21, 2001
CHARLIE GIBSON: The president in his speech last night, very forceful. Four out of five Americans watched it. Everybody gathered around the television set last night. The president issued a series of demands to the Taliban, already rejected. We'll get to that in a moment. He also outlined what is being called the Bush Doctrine, a promise that all terrorists organizations with global reach will be found, stopped and defeated.
September 21, 2001
CHARLIE GIBSON: Senator Daschle, let me start with you. People were looking for a Bush Doctrine. They may have found it when he said the war on terror will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped or defeated. That's pretty broad. Broader than you expected?
December 9, 2001
GEORGE WILL: The Bush doctrine holds that anyone who governs a territory is complicit in any terrorism that issues from that territory. That covers the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Second, the war on terrorism is indivisible, it's part of the Bush doctrine.
December 11, 2001
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Two years ago, September 1999, Bush gave his first speech when he was running about terrorism. And his first--had the first explanation of the Bush doctrine, that if you harbor a terrorist, you're going to be attacked. The Bush White House is putting this out, saying it shows that Bush was very prescient, but that was only one speech given in the campaign.
January 28, 2002
BOB WOODWARD: This is now the Bush Doctrine . . . , namely that if we're attacked by terrorists, we will not just go after those terrorists but the countries or the people who harbor them.
January 29, 2002
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: It was striking and significant that the president really expanded the Bush doctrine. If a nation builds a weapon of mass destruction--Iraq, Iran or North Korea--we will reserve the right to take out those weapons even if we're not attacked or even if there's not a threat.
March 19, 2004
TERRY MORAN: That was the Bush doctrine we just heard. On this one-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, President Bush offered a very broad justification of American leadership in the world under him since 9/11. Not just since one year in Iraq. For American voters as an argument that the country is safer, but more as you point out, for the world, which has been divided by his leadership, that Iraq is knit, in his mind, very firmly into that war on terrorism. One omission which I believe will be noted around the world, he made no mention of the role of multilateral institutions, the UN and others, in this fight against terrorism. In his mind, it's clear it's American leadership with others following along.
May 7, 2006
GEORGE WILL: Now the argument from the right is the CIA is a rogue agent because it has not subscribed to the Bush doctrine. The Bush doctrine being that American security depends on the spread of democracy and we know how to do that. The trouble is, Negroponte, who is considered by some of these conservatives the villain here and an enemy of the Bush doctrine is the choice of Bush, which makes Bush an insufficient subscriber to the Bush doctrine.
I'll stop there, although anyone with a Nexis account can find far more where that came from. Preemptive war; American unilateralism; the overthrow of regimes that harbor and abet terrorists--all of these things and more have been described as the "Bush Doctrine." It was a bit of a sham on Gibson's part to have pretended that there's such a thing as 'the' Bush Doctrine, much less that it was enunciated in September 2002.

Posted by Richard Starr on September 12, 2008 02:08 AM | Permalink
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/09/what_exactly_is_the_bush_doctr.asp

Why don't these media luminaries adhere to your definition of the Bush Doctrine? Are you also prepared to say that CHARLIE GIBSON, GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, BOB WOODWARD, TERRY MORAN and GEORGE WILL and a host of other media elites are also poorly informed and un-objective and trying to muddy the waters? If you say they are, then you destroy you own claim of her supposed "superfluous non answer on the Bush Doctrine".

Cordially,

The only time Article 5 has been invoked was after 9/11, i.e., the attack against the US, which is why NATO is in Afghanistan.

So by joining NATO you are actually less likely to be attacked because you know all the members will fight back.

That’s the purpose of an alliance. It kept Western Europe free of Soviet dominance for 45 years.

Its only logical that spinners would be out trying to control the damage by now.

I'm got dizzy just reading your reply.

The issue is not spinners, damage done by Palin, or my reply. The issue I raised with you is your claim that Palin's request for a claification was a superfluous non-answer, a claim that depends for its coherence on your assumption that there is a single, universally acknowledged definition of the Bush Doctrine.

Here, I'll keep it simple for you: Why don't the aforesaid media luminaries (with the exception of Charlie Gibson's latest iteration of it) subscribe to your definition of the Bush Doctrine?

Can you can answer that question with no spinning, and no unresponsive directives to just to Google it?

Cordially,

It is not so much what the definition of the Bush Doctrine or the definition of pre-emption is, as where or what direction the definition takes you.

Gibson didn't actually point it out, but he did analogize Bush's authorizing special forces entry into Pakistan.

So, there is a military procedure that incorporates pre-emption into the process. It is called the 7 step defense cycle against a terror attack, or in this case a conventional military attack.

The complete cycle is deterrence, prevention, pre-emption, crisis management, consequence management, attribution, and retaliation.

All steps need not be present, and particulars steps may serve two functions, like the shock and awe of a preemptive attack serves as a deterrent, or put another way, the invasion of Iraq convinced Khadafi/Libya to co-operate.

You can take Gibson's question in any direction you wish, but it is certainly a different from the direction I would take it.

BTW, would you happen to know if the McCain campaign has briefed Palin on nuclear bunker busters?

I don't know to what level of specificity Palin has currently been briefed on foreign policy or military matters.

I also don't know if any Vice President in history who had to assume the Presidency was really prepared for it, but they all did have the Presidents' entire Cabinets in place as advisors when they did, and it would not be any different for Palin.

Cordially,