The Gibson Doctrine
When he asked Palin whether she agreed with the Bush Doctrine without defining it, he gave the game away. He lost any pretense of fairness. Asking the same unanswerable question three times had one purpose — to humiliate the woman. That was not merely partisan. It was mean.
I couldn’t answer it — and I have been steeped in international affairs since I was a Fellow at the Columbia University School of International Affairs in the 1970s. I have since been to 82 countries, and have lectured in Russian in Russia and in Hebrew in Israel. Most Americans would consider a candidate for national office who had such a resume qualified as regards international relations. Yet I had no clue how to answer Gibson’s question.
I had no clue because there is no right answer. There are at least four doctrines that are called “Bush Doctrine,” which means that there is no “Bush Doctrine.” It is a term bereft of meaning, as became abundantly clear when Gibson finally explained what he was referring to:
GIBSON: 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 — the right to preemptive attack of a country that was planning an attack on America?
That’s the Bush Doctrine? “The right to preemptive attack of a country that was planning an attack on America?”
Isn’t that just common sense? What country in history has thought it did not have the right to attack those planning to attack it? I learned the “Bush Doctrine” when I was a student at yeshiva in the fourth grade, when I was taught a famous Talmudic dictum from about 1,800 years ago: “If someone is coming to kill you, rise early and kill him.”