Conservative Donnybrook

Via Jonathan Chait, apparently not:

Gibson: Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?

Palin: In what respect, Charlie?

Gibson: What do you interpret it to be?

Palin: His worldview?

Gibson: No, the Bush Doctrine. Enunciated 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 hellbent 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 of democracy– is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

Gibson: The Bush Doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense.

Andy McCarthy on The Corner (also via Chait/TNR) vigorously defends:

The Bush Doctrine, technically, is not asserting a right of preemptive attack.  It is saying that if Country A facilitates terror, it is responsible for that terrorist organization’s strikes, and therefore we can attack Country A.  That is not preemptive; it is retributive.

It was utterly reasonable for Gov. Palin to press Charlie Gibson on what Gibson meant by the Bush Doctrine.  Everyone does not mean the same thing by the term, there is lots of good faith argument about what it means, and — because the administration itself has only half-heartedly adhered to it — there is also the confusion between theory and practice.

Um, nice try. It seems pretty clear to me that Palin simply didn’t know what Gibson was talking about by the term “Bush Doctrine.” (You can see the video here.) Isn’t that a little bit messed up?

After Gibson defines the Bush Doctrine as “the right of anticipatory self-defense,” Palin says that “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…” Now, my understanding is that an essential aspect of Bush’s prosecution of the War on Terror is that the threat doesn’t have to be imminent–hence Iraq. From the 2003 SOTU:

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.

So if Palin is displaying the mastery of the subtleties of the Bush Doctrine that is attributed to her by Andrew McCarthy, maybe she’s slyly repudiating the Iraq war!

On the other hand, accepting for argument’s sake the she-didn’t-know-what-he-was-talking-about theory, it at least shows that she’s clearly not a regular reader of The Weekly Standard, so maybe we can take some comfort in that.

On the other other hand, this WaPo account of a Palin speech seems a pretty unfair:

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 — Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

The idea that Iraq shared responsibility with al-Qaeda for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself.

Well, come on now. It’s my understanding that the standard Bush/National Review line on this is that whatever the merits of the Iraq War when we invaded, Al Queda is there now and they’re fueling the insurgency, so the War in Iraq is indeed a full-fledged front in the war against bin Ladenism. Now that’s debatable, but it’s a completely separate issue from the theory that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.

(crossposted at spinline.net)