This paragraph from Mr. Krauthammer is of some interest:
“If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume — unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise — that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.”
I don’t know, but it seems like Krauthammer is being intellectually dishonest. We all know that the popular conception of what the Bush Doctrine is, is the one that concerns pre-emptively attacking another nation. It might be wise to give Amazon a look or Wikipedia, as you suggest, to see how the public at large views the Bush Doctrine. It’s certain not Bush’s “freedom agenda.”
I tell you, I’m kind of confused. I used to think that Krauthammer was an intellectual badass when it came to politics, a real deal guy who understand the gamemanship of politics and called out the BS. He know what the Bush Doctrine is. I don’t have to tell you what it is, and neither does Amazon or Wikipedia.
“We all know that the popular conception of what the Bush Doctrine is, is the one that concerns pre-emptively attacking another nation”
This conception is one that has, I believe, been engbendered by the media to present Bush as being out of line with history. Fact is, the administration wouldn’t have invaded Afghanistan or Iraq if not for the overt act on 9/11. Of course, 9/11 and Iraq were not directly related. But why did they choose Iraq, instead of, say, Iran? Because we were very careful to choose a nation that had violated the terms of peace from a previous war.
One could argue that the Truman Doctrine, though ostensibly devoted to “containment,” could easily be construed to advocate pre-emption. We “contained” communism, which is as nebulous an enemy as terrorism. If it was alright to intervene in a civil war in Greece or Vietnam, it is not much of a stretch to intervene in the affairs of a nation that we had conditionally promised not to invade 12 years beforehand.
I always thought "Bush Doctrine" was his post-9/11 with-or-against stance.
;-/
I actually used "Bush Doctrine" in a conversation last week, intending it to have Krauthammer's second definition, per GWB: "From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." While the doctrine can justify a preemptive war, that is far from its only potential consequence.
If "Bush Doctrine" really has such different meanings to different people, I suppose I should stop using the phrase.