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To: KayEyeDoubleDee

“1) 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.”

This is the actual Bush Doctrine. The remaining three points are hardly unique to Bush.

“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”

This has been U.S. policy since Jefferson went after the Barbary pirates. Mexico did not directly provoke us, we thought Spain attacked us but they didn’t, Germany did not directly attack us before WWI, Germany did not attacke us before WWII, North Korea did not attack us before the Korean War, Vietnam in all likelihood did not attack us before that conflict. In fact, we have gone to war because of direct provocation very few times. Japan comes to mind, as do the Confederate States and Great Britain twice. Any others?

“3) a policy of supporting democracy around the world”

At least since Wilson’s quixotic Fourteen Points, this has been our official policy. Bush’s use of it is an updating of Wilsonianism and the Truman Doctrine.

“4) a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way”

This depends on how one defines “unilateral.” To libs, I suppose it means giving nebulous “world opinion” the equivalent of a UN security council veto. In point of fact, we now have, and always have had, allies. The only time I can think of when we allowed our allies to dictate our foreign policy was with Stalin at the end of WWII

In summary, whoever wrote this Wikipedia entry is ignorant.


27 posted on 09/11/2008 10:11:55 PM PDT by Tublecane
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To: Tublecane

Can you link to something showing this “official” Bush doctrine?


29 posted on 09/12/2008 4:00:07 AM PDT by TaxRelief (Walmart: Keeping my family on-budget since 1993.)
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