So, I basically said in many different ways that it's troubling she doesn't know what the Bush Doctrine is. I guess I apologize that I also offered other legitimate possibilities, but I don't think I was offering excuses or spin for her. The lack of knowledge is revealing. Reasonable people will disagree whether she has other qualifications that make her a great VP choice, but foreign policy knowledge has not yet been demonstrated to be one of them.

I just wish Charlie, when he defined the doctrine for her (they needed crickets in the background when she gave that deer in headlights pause), would have made something up on the spot, and then she'd HAVE to have gone along with it, not knowing what it was. That would have been suhweeeeeeet. Maybe like this…. Charlie: “Well, the Bush Doctrine as I believe it, states that any country which is in the Middle East and is headed by someone with more than 4 syllables is an imminent threat. Do you agree with this?”

What's the difference between a pretty politician and someone who actually knows what they're talking about? lipstick. I wish her luck, just not as my president (or vice) right now. maybe someday, maybe after she works her way up and does some *learning*, but not right now.

She didn’t have a different interpretation of the Bush Doctrine. She flat out didn’t know WHAT IT WAS. Anyone who’s followed politics for more than 48 hours and isn’t a complete dunderhead knows what it is.

This woman is completely unprepared to be Vice President and by extension, President of the United States. And if you do the actuary tables, there's a STRONG chance she'd be commander in chief.

If Obama isn't prepared, then Palin DEFINITELY isn't.

Does she know what “anticipatory self-defense” or “pre-emptive” war means?

And to claim ignorance over the Bush Doctrine is ridiculous. John McCain knows what it is. He is even on video in 2005 defining it and defending it.

The Bush Doctrine isn't some arcane political science term. It's been the central point of contention in national security policy for the last 7 years.

Yes, there are several elements of the Bush Doctrine. But it's not like she started talking about attacking nations that harbor terrorists, or expanding democracy in her response. She asked, “You mean his worldview?” That means she had NO IDEA there even was a Bush Doctrine.

Also, her response on Pakistan was so pathetically vague because she had no idea how to answer the question. This isn't some Karl Rove trick where she's outsmarting everybody else. She was over her head. Watch the body language and it's obvious.

Georgia and Ukraine being admitted into Nato would be done in a manner in which threats would not be an option or necessary. That is what you and yours do not understand when commenting on this matter. Nato would never allow someone into the organization under any form of footing that would immediately or not long after promise the outbreak of war.

Communist democracy eh? And you're lecturing Marshall on Eastern European affairs?

The people themselves in Russia have adopted democracy to fit their own agenda. They themselves speak of democracy of being something that is not and should not and will not be defined for them and certainly does not merit definitions coming from the west. Thus anyone who understands and studies what is happening in Russia understands that Putin is attempting to give communism a new name called Democracy.

The failure is not His. It is not Russia. It has always been the wests who has embraced nearly every nation under the old Soviet Influence but the one that has the most to gain or the most to loose. Russia.

I can certainly interpret her response as saying that she beleives we have the right to preemptively invade another country to protect the country, but it was a yes or no question and all she could say was that the US should keep all options on the table.

In other words if she had said “yes” or “no” and given the wrong answer, she would have never heard the end of it from the press…. This way she can backpedal if necessary…

Instead Palin had no answer nor had she even thought about it.

So I still don't know where she stands. But no doubt tomorrow there will be clarification from camp McCain that she does support such cross-border action… though an answer from camp McCain doesn't give me any insight or color into her thoughts (and isn't that the purpose of the Gibson interview?) on this matter and what sort of threats she might find acceptable. Does she believe such cross-border military action should be aimed at all terrorist targets, even if innocent civilians are caught in the cross-fire and become anti-American? Or does she believe that the risks of such military strikes are only worth it for “high value” targets (and how does she define high value targets?

Also she said they (the McCain administration) would work with other countries so war is not a first option, but a last option. I thought war was already a last option… If you want to replay the quote, go to time 1:25 on the linked video…. Maybe I didn't hear very well…

Gibson: do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

Palin: in what respect, Charlie?

Gibson: well, what do you interpret it to be?

Palin: His world view?

Wikipedia reports as to the Bush Doctrine:

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.[1] LATER it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a supposed threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate (used to justify the invasion of Iraq), a policy of supporting democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the spread of terrorism, and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way.[2][3][4] SOME of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002.[5]

A fair question by Charlie would have parsed each point of the Bush doctrine, as he, the questioner understood it, and asked her whether she agreed or disagreed and why.

When Charlie did parse a part of it (himself erring in his understanding of the doctrine in its fullest sense by limited it to the preemptive strike element), asking her a legit policy question, she knocked it out of the box:

“Gibson: the Bush Doctrine is we have the right of self-defense, preemptive strike against any country we think is going to attack us. do you agree with us?

She responded: “”Charlie, 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. In fact, the President has the obligation, the duty to defend.”

To the extent that represents a shrinking back from the Bush doctrine by returning to the requirement of “imminence” for a preemptive strike, so what. She gave her own policy answer to the question and it was completely reasonable. You folks are grasping at straws. Whoever the President is, McCain, Obama, Palin or Biden, if a threat arises, not one of them would decide a response based on analyzing what would President Bush, applying the Bush doctrine as understood by the media elite, have done (WWGWBD?!) Just plain petty.

On the right to invade Pakistan, I'll take Palin's somewhat more nuanced answer anyday over Obama's position expressed in August, 2007:

“Barack Obama, a leading Democrat candidate in the US presidential race, provoked anger yesterday by threatening to send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists — even without permission from that country’s Government.

Standing in front of a Stars and Stripes flag, Mr Obama said: “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again . . . If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

The problem once again was in the manner Charlie posed the question using “rights” terminology. Difficult to separate out of the equation is the implication that if you have the right, you're necessarily going to use it as soon as you recognize you have it. And that's false. The right to apply military force cross-border into a sovereign nation, albeit into an autonomous or semi-autonomous region, does not exist carte blanche but can arise under a certain set of circumstances and when those circumstances arise, it does not necessarily mean the right should be immediately exercised. Palin's answer about keeping all of the options on the table was, in the final analysis, succinctly correct.

Get over it, libs.

The failure of the west was in allowing Russia to rot and wollow in its democratic misery until a Putin came along and reinvigorated a new and unique form of communistic democracy… Josh Marshall just dont understand the dynamics of what is going on in eastern Europe.

Communist democracy eh? And you're lecturing Marshall on Eastern European affairs?

All of which is why no American politician should flippantly invoke Article V of the NATO charter. If Russia knows we will never go to war with Russia over Georgia – and they do – mentioning Article V makes us look weaker. We look like like kids picking fights with giant bullies.

Allowing the Ukraine and Georgia to rot and wollow in their own democracy is just simply encouraging a repeat of the Russian experiment. This is exactly what Putin is banking on and it is exactly that, with respects, Josh Marshall just dont understand the dynamics of what is going on in eastern Europe.

Georgia is more then a tiny country. It is the face of democracy in this region and where it will go from here.

A further point. It's true that Obama and Biden both favor Georgia's accession into NATO — a very bad policy position, as I've argued before. However, I do not think that their positions and McCain's positions are equal. The best analogy I can point to is the nominal agreement on Iraq policy (embodied in the Iraq Liberation Act) between the Clinton administration and the most radical neocons in the late 1990s. Nominally, they shared a policy. In practice, however, it was one group that was completely nuts and gung-ho in favor of a reckless idea and another that was sort of dabbling in and passively favoring the same policy. Not that that is saying much in the latter's favor. But there's a big difference.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/216003.php

In addition Nato itself was considering Both Ukraine and Georgia for membership into their organization with the endorsement of the United States INCLUDING OBAMA, BIDEN, McCAIN and BUSH.

While literally true, it ignores the gulf in spirit between Obama and McCain on the issue of Georgia and NATO.

Still, I wish Obama hadn't caved and took a more hawkish line.