Bush Doctrine

Many commentators have correctly pointed out that Sarah Palin obviously didn't know what Charlie Gibson was referring to when he asked her about the "Bush Doctrine". Most people associate it with Bush's idea that the US can wage preventive war against anyone we feel threatened by, and it really is appalling that a person who could be president a year from now is unaware of this.

However Dan Froomklin in this Washington Post column points out that Jacob Weisberg, in his book "The Bush Tragedy", actually identified six different Bush Doctrines:

• Bush Doctrine 1.0 was Unipolar Realism (3/7/99--9/10/01)


• Bush Doctrine 2.0 was With Us or Against Us (9/11/01--5/31/02)


• Bush Doctrine 3.0 was Preemption (6/1/02--11/5/03)


• Bush Doctrine 4.0 was Democracy in the Middle East (11/6/03--1/19/05)


• Bush Doctrine 5.0 was Freedom Everywhere (1/20/05-- 11/7/06)


• Bush Doctrine 6.0 (11/8/06 to date) is the "absence of any functioning doctrine at all"

I guess arrogance and shallow political sloganeering do not constitute a "doctrine"!