Er, Bush has a Doctrine?

Last night on American TV, the Republican candidate for Vice-President, Sarah Palin, gave the first long interview since being picked by John McCain. The full interview transcript is here. 

In the video below, she's asked about the Bush Doctrine, the set of principles that have shaped American foreign policy for the last seven years, and which were announced and described repeatedly by the President from her own political party:

As you can see, Palin clearly doesn't know what the Bush Doctrine is. It's not that she doesn't recognize the name "Bush Doctrine," she actually doesn't seem to know any of its moving parts. She quickly changes the subject by reciting a series of platitudes about terrorism and protecting Americans. She also favors admitting Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO, and is willing to contemplate war with Russia as a result. However, this position -- foolish, if you ask me -- is shared by Obama and Biden, so it won't be seen as very controversial.

If only America produced journalists like, say, Stephen Sackur or Jeremy Paxman. They would howl with derision at Palin's ignorance. Their follow-up questions would turn Palin's intellectual pockets inside-out, showing the lint-balls and pennies inside. Almost any German journalist would do the same thing -- even if it looked rude, and even if Palin seemed offended. Why? Because foreign policy is serious business. It's for grown-ups. Chivalry is nice, and being nice is nice, but this person could be running the world's most powerful country in 5 months, and better know her stuff.

Palin seems like a decent, likable person. But she is way out of her depth, and her presence on a major-party Presidential ticket is an embarrassment to the United States.

Comments

[stephan]

ps to Don:

"I would be far more impressed with the quality of analysis I see coming from Germany if it varied little more with the ups and downs and changing facts and events.
As it is what I've been seeing is "Doomed to lose" followed by "quagmire! followed by "You have completely lost" from 2002 on."

You don't seem to read Focus, Spiegel, Zeit, FAZ... So what are your sources to get this impression?

[stephan]

@Don:
You are right, that was a quotation, sorry, my mistake. Still, it seemed you agreed on its assessment of the sitation in Iraq, which I found chillingly cynical as such.

Just to give some reasons for my opposition towards JG's "victory is imminent" assessment:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-violence-is-down-ndash-but-not-because-of-americas-surge-929896.html

And then you worte: "I would be far more impressed with the quality of analysis I see coming from Germany if it varied little more with the ups and downs and changing facts and events.
As it is what I've been seeing is "Doomed to lose" followed by "quagmire! followed by "You have completely lost" from 2002 on."

And I would find it far more impressing when you could understand that there is not much that could change when you start from the point that the whole war is a criminal endavour. Whether the criminals reach their goal or not. Why should one pay respect or even admiration, possibly, to a criminal that declares to have come close to finish the job?
I think the brighter ones among the Germans (i.e. those with at least a tiny knowledge of Germany recent history) are very suspicious of any sort of war of aggression (Angriffskrieg) under the flag of "we save the world from the dirt".

Once one German minister had the courage to give a hint why Germans might overwhelmingly have opposed that war – and was forced to quit afterwards in a shameful act of cowardice towards Washington. The gist of it: Germans kind of know that excuse from their very own recent history, that people cried for bombs and mayhem to liberate them, and may be a little weary of that.

No wonder, you don't hear a lot of jubilation.
Maybe Germans still have some historically based hesitations towards going to war in general.
But no need to worry: NATO and its puppets have already done a quite successful job in re-educating and will further do so.
And I am sure, the press branch of the military industry together with the latter's lobbyists in the political establishment will soon succeed in erasing this ridiculous pacifist flower-power dream world naivety.

[stephan]

And, as GG puts it:

"For those claiming that the Bush Doctrine is far too ill-defined for anyone to have opined on it coherently, this -- as far as I'm concerned -- resolves the issue decisively:"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNmKat4RX-g

[Don Stadler]

Marcus, this link was a little better.

http://www2.cruzio.com/~sbarrett/mcollins.htm

There was a film on Michael Collins released in 1996, I think.

Collins was both a guerilla leader and a politician. He mounted a successful campaign against the British occupation between 1919 and 1921. He then went to London to negociate the treaty which created the Irish Free State, a compromise which gave Ireland an autonemous government as part of the British Commonwealth.

This last was too much for a number of other Republican leaders to stomache. They walked out of the Dail to start the Irish Civil War. Collins became the C in C of the Free State forces, and was killed in an ambush in August 1922.

But the Free State forces prevailed in the civil war under the leadership of Richard Mulcahy.

The point I was trying to make is that Collins had experience of both sides of the conflict. He knew how fragile guerilla forces can be (most of his 'army' had been captured or killed by the Brits shortly before the truce was called and the treaty talks began). He commanded the Free State forces when Eammon De Valera went into rebellion, and the Free Staters won the Civil War.

Above all he knew that guerilla warfare (or warfare of any kind) was only a single tool in the toolbox of a revolutionary. He fought when he had to but preferred negociations. He negociated with the British and took a deal which he knew would not be popular in Ireland but which gave them peace and the autonemous state they needed. He was killed while trying to reopen communications with De Valera's forces, many of whom had been personal friends.

[M. Möhling]

> Collins was a brilliant Irishmen who invented modern geurilla tactics -
> and then formulated the first successful counter-insurgency strategy.

Don, I didn't find anything specific on this in his wikipedia entry, perusing the article on the Irish Civil War didn't help much either. Do you have some details? Did he write about it in "The Path to Freedom"?

[Don]

That was a quotation, stephan.

I would be far more impressed with the quality of analysis I see coming from Germany if it varied little more with the ups and downs and changing facts and events.

As it is what I've been seeing is "Doomed to lose" followed by "quagmire! followed by "You have completely lost" from 2002 on.

One suspects that German students of insurgency may be a bit more influenced by the romanticism of the mighty Che than the actual end result of his battles, or more modern studies.

If one really must go retro, however, may I suggest a close study of one Michael Collins? Mr. Collins was a brilliant Irishmen who invented modern geurilla tactics - and then formulated the first successful counter-insurgency strategy.

[stephan]

@Don:

Now I know why you insist, that Americans are much more funny than Germans!
You can make it sound as if you honestly believe what you say when you write: "But things have changed. First, America is very close to flat out winning in Iraq. This shouldn't be a partisan data point, but it is, and Republicans are starting to hold their chins high, thanks to the success of the surge..."

I am amazed in shock and awe and wonder on which planet you live...

[Don]

Yes, Alexandra. Which is why Greenwald did no favors to Obama with that column.

Here is a Jonah Goldberg column arguing that the GOP has new life: http://www.nypost.com/seven/09142008/news/politics/life_of_the_party_returning_at_last_129005.htm

"The press and Hollywood have spent the last three years making it sound like people become Republicans so they can flood New Orleans, ruin the economy, torture Muslims, listen to everyone's phone calls, and make a ton from selling papier maché bulletproof vests to the troops.

To cap it off, John McCain, renowned for driving the GOP base batty by bebopping and scatting all over his own party in order (according to his conservative detractors) to win praise from The New York Times, actually won the nomination."

"In short, you don't have to be a political scientist to understand why Republican self-identification has been at a 16-year low or why even many of the GOP faithful were planning on putting out their "Gone fishing" signs this November.

But things have changed. First, America is very close to flat out winning in Iraq. This shouldn't be a partisan data point, but it is, and Republicans are starting to hold their chins high, thanks to the success of the surge, which, far more than the war, was an almost purely Republican initiative. "

[Alexandra]

Interesting article, stephan, although the closing paragraph on why on earth the Obama campaign doesn't stress the fact more that McCain very much wants to start a couple of more wars instead of finishing the business in Iraq. I think Don is right, the Obama campaign is like the hare in front of the snake currently, they have to break free from the whole Palin issue, it doesn't do them good.

[stephan]

I don't know how to do all these fancy formatting things here (insert links, for example), yet. So I just add this quote from Glenn Greenwald's site (as mentioned below) – the part that I fond particularly interesting:

Personally, I'm not particularly bothered by Palin's so-called "lack of experience." I considered the fact that Obama hadn't spent large amounts of time enmeshed in our horrific Washington Establishment to be one of the strengths of his candidacy, and I largely view Palin's lack of Washington experience the same way. The difference isn't their "experience," but the fact that one has had almost two full years to judge Obama's views, positions, approaches, thought-processes and capacity for judgment as he's been subjected to the glaring scrutiny of the campaign, and a complete picture of Obama, for better or worse, has emerged.
By start contrast, Palin is a blank slate -- not just in terms of what we know about her, but worse, in terms of what her beliefs are. Outside of a few discrete issues of interest to her (drilling for oil and opposition to environmentalism), and aside from some deep religious fervor and trite right-wing slogans that have been implanted in her brain during these last several weeks, she doesn't really appear to have any actual thoughts about most political matters. As John Cole put it: "Sarah Palin is the distilled essence of wingnut. She has it all. She is dishonest. She is a religious nut. She is incurious. She is anti-science. She is inexperienced. She abuses her authority. She hides behind executive privilege. She is a big spender. She works from the gut and places a greater value on instinct than knowledge."

[stephan]

Don,
if you dare to, go to www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/# you will find, in todays post, that there is not at all such an ambiguity about what the Bush Doctrine is. And should not be for anyone aspiring to a job like the one SP does.
Check it out.
So it's only if you demand that journalists should ask politicians only those questions they can be sure the latter know something about, that you can claim Gibson should have not asked SP her about it.

[Don]

Obama is in the midst of a negative feedback loop. McCain has put him into a postion where Obama is losing ground every day and the Obama campaign and Democrats generally are slowly the bright confidence of just 2 weeks ago.

Obama needs to do something dramatic NOW to cut the loop. Fortunately there is a strategic move he can make which will break the vicious news cycle and put public attention back squarely where it belongs - on McCain and Obama. The cost is eating a little crow.

Not too long ago McCain invited Obama to participate in a series of public 'Town Hall' style debates with questions posed by members of the public instead of news media (I might be wrong about the format but not about the debates).

Obama, then the clear frontrunner, turned McCain down cold. McCain then embarked on his current strategy. There is some basis to think that Obama gave him no other choice by refusing to face him openly.

Obama has now slipped behind. I think the obvious move is to call John McCain up publically and accept the chllenge. I puts McCain on the spot. McCain will look vsry bad if he turns Obama down. McCain WILL look good by accepting - in the short term anyway.

This will do any number of good things for Obama however. It will make him look as deciive as a President needs to be & burnish his leadership credentials. It will cut the vicious downward cycle of the current news cycle and start a new one. About whether McCain will accept the challenge, what Obama hopes to gain, the leadership Obama is showing, etc. He's GOT to break out of the current 'deer in the headlights' mode!

McCain will almost certainly accept because if he doesn't McCain will then be the candidate on the defensive, with Obama driving in the message with derisive daily calls to McCain to come out and 'fight like a man' rather than a yellow dog.

So then there will be yet another news cycle speculating about what (and how) the candidates will do and say. Genuinely exciting - and excitment is Obama's stock in trade! Boring attacks on Palin won't do for him.

You think the great orator Obama won't be in with a chance against the duller McCain? Think again. Advantage Obama.

[Don]

"You said nobody is born with foreign policy experience and expertise. True, and I totally understand that a governor of Alaska might not be overly interested in these issues. It takes years to learn. Also true."

Alexandra, I said the process can take years. Indeed, in a sense EVERY new President arrives in office as a foreign poloicy naif and has to learn on the job. Even Clinton. I remember a cartoon about Clinton captioned "Ich bien Ein Beginner". But he wasn't like that by the end, was he?

"But Palin could become president in a far shorter time frame than "years", and that's what makes me wonder whether McCain shouldn't have picked somebody different. I understand that there is a campaign rationale behind this pick, but in my view it doesn't come across as very responsible move."

I think everyone including myself has been missing the point behind the Palin nomination - it's not about governing as much as it is about the campaign. And as a campaign move it has worked brilliantly. A month ago McCain looked old, tired, out of it, responding to Obama's younger, faster, hipper, more agile campaign.

Now the tables have been turned. No - it's actually WORSE than that; Obama is on the hop and responding to the opposition's movements - that is true. But he's responding to PALIN - not McCain. And that is absolutely disasterous. If he were responding to McCain he'd at least be doing some damage to McCain. But he's trying to OBLIBERATE Palin, training 90% of his firepower on her right now. Some of it is wounding her but a lot is ricocheting and wounding Obama. McCain is taking very little damage from this dumb firefight.

The MSM attacks are not helping Obama. They are (and have been for many years) 90% in the bag for the Democrats. When they had a monopoly on communication there were good and bad sides to that. Good in the sense they could manipulate the message to benefit the Chosen One; bad in the sense that there was an increasing awareness of what was occuring and many discounted them completely or increasingly actually went the opposite way in a reaction to overweening power.

Today they have lost their monopoly but not their arrogance or bias. They are training their guns at Palin - and wounding Obama AND Palin. This is a bad dynamic for Obama.

Even if they manage to obliberate Camp Palin (I doubt they will) they will be left with a wounded candidate who still has to seize the initiative somehow and beat McCain.

I'm beginng to see the same 'deer in the headlights' look in the Democrats eyes as I saw in 2004. They should win this year but it's all turning into mud and they DON'T understand WHY!

[Jeffrey -- New York]

Stephan,

Okay. See ya.

*

[stephan]

@Jeffrey:

Not that you are telling me exciting news here. So in this regard you seem to be less gifted than the average USAmerican – your stories lack the suspense.

I am not at all thrilled by the old stereotypes. I want some new ones!
Until there are some coming up here, this is my very last contribution to this thread.

[Jeffrey -- New York]

Amerikanische Oberflaechlichkeit?

Absolutely. As far as friendship is concerned, Americans reveal far more what Germans would call "oberflaechlichkeit." But, as with so many other observations, there are cultural reasons that help explain this aspect of American behavior. Compared to Germans, Americans are very mobile and we learn to make and lose A LOT of friends during the course of our lives. We can make new friends easily -- and lose them easily. Friendship for Germans is a far more serious affair. Germans tend not to move that much and tend to make fewer but deeper friendships.

The US is a nation of strangers and we value an open and easy exchange, even in public. Germans, in contrast, are far more private. Wim Wenders' "Der Amerkianische Freundshaft" is a good illustration of the differences in how Germans and Americans view friendship. Dennis Hopper, a thoroughly shady American "cowboy," befriends Bruno Ganz, who plays a cautious German craftsman (a frame-maker). The movie riffs on these basic differences.

So, yes, in terms of friendship, Americans do tend to keep to the surface far more than Germans. At the same time, Americans do occasionally maintain old friendships, but not to the same extent as Germans.

*

[Jeffrey -- New York]

Stephan,

You need to read a little more closely. My girlfriend was American. We were living in Schwaben near her father, an American who had moved to Germany years earlier and worked as a psychotherapist there. Her STEP-MOM was German. She was the one who had to apologize to the other Germans for her step-daughter's comment.

So how long did you live in the US, and where?

*

[Jeffrey -- New York]

Stephan,

Der Amerikaner Holden Caulfield:

Ich bin der irrsinnigste Luegner, dem ihr in eurem Leben begegnet seid. Ganz schlimm is das. Sogar wenn ich unterwegs zum Laden bin, um die Zeitschrift zu kaufen, und einer fragt mich, wohim ich geh, sag ich wahrscheinlich, ich geh in die Oper. Schrecklich is das

*

[stephan]

Would I therefore believe "That's just the way Americans are!"? Of course not.
And: no, it wasn't just once that I had the pleasure just described.

[stephan]

Plus: I was amazed how stiff socializing can be in the US.

Never ever have I experienced a big private party in Germany that was
a) so thoroughly planned up to the tiniest detail,
b) so formally determined in what who had to say when in which form,
c) so full of traps and delicate social constellations that one didn't dare to breathe almost,

as I have had the pleasure in WASPy US.

Just to add some lesser worn out observations.

[stephan]

@ Jeffrey:

The way you peddle your circumstantial knowledge of Germany and its inhabitants tells a lot about your abiltiy (or lack of) to compare things. I assume at one point you were left by your German girl-friend, which led you to the sports of generalizing and lamenting. I assume this because I know the situation the other way around. But that is complete nonsense and silly and only excusable up to four month after... ;-)

I won't tell you how many times I was stared on in disbelieve, when I found situations or remarks fairly amusing in the US. And I don't tend to laugh about other people stumbling or failing, really. (My rude German sense of humour is not developped enough for the likes of "Jackass". I am afraid I have to practise harder to reach these heights). So my impression about US Americans and their sense of humour at that time was quite similar to yours in Swabia (which, of course, is somewhat hardcore to have your first encounter with Germany just there, I admit). Did I thereby conclude US Americans had no humour?

I really find it ridiculous, how you insist on this kind of stereotyping. But I am sure you are equally thrilled by the flood of books about the differences between men and women as you are about the most worn out stereotypes about German-American differences.

Talking of generalizations. I didn't sense at all that "the" US American had more sense of humour than the German. What I did sense as a difference, though, is how many US Americans like to tell stories and how good so many of them are in this. And that all of those seemed to know what the essential ingredience of a narrative is: that it is exciting to follow the story unfolding. Much more so than whether the story is actually true or not. I see – with all hesitations – that in this regard, Germans are much weaker and often stick too much to the notion that told stories should be true (whatever that is): "Wer einmal lügt, dem glaubt man nicht, auch wenn er nun die Wahrheit spricht."

You know, Jeffrey, it's not even so much that you are pigeonholing, what annoys me so much. It's more that your observations are so unoriginal: Germans have no sense of humour – yawn. The only matching reply I could think of is: US Americans are so superficial!

I think this blog has deserved better.

[Jeffrey -- New York]

Spring in Paris?

Are you kidding?

Spring in BERLIN is much better.

WARNING: German using sarcasm! Stand back!

I love all of these "be berliner" clips.

*

[Jeffrey -- New York]

Morgen, everyone.

In our discussion of the challenge Germans face around humorous English speakers, I forgot to mention that Andrew had already written a very good blog entry, "Teach me to laugh, Herr Boyes." While allowing, as I did last night, that there are many funny and witty Germans, Andrew notes that the place of humor in German culture has its limits:

Now, things have loosened up considerably in Germany since that time, but there's still a trace of stigma attached to light-heartedness and irony. It is largely banished from almost all social endeavors that are labeled "serious." So that means at academic conferences, business meetings, literary readings, classical music performances, even some family gatherings etc., one is only allowed to go so far with any joke.

Andrew offers some examples to back this up, and anyone who has lived in Germany can surely add a few more. I recall sitting at a dinner-party in Swabia (Spaetzle, of course) back in the 1980s when someone at the table lamented the fact that they were now using music to increase egg-production (yep, piping music into the henhouses). The Germans around the table shook their heads and wondered what the world was coming to. My girlfriend at the time, tongue in cheek, asked whether they had discovered whether chickens laid more eggs listening to Beethoven or Mozart. I laughed -- the only one. All the Germans looked at us as if were were insane. My girlfriend's father was American (but lived in Germany for years and worked as a psychotherapist -- no end of work in Germany, to be sure) and her step-mother was German. In that silence, the step-mother turned to the other Germans and apologized with two words. "American humor," she said.

*

[M. Möhling]

Posting frenzy? Ve can do zat too, mein Herr. So, it's belle de jour. Duh.

[M. Möhling]

Dang! Triple posting for evading comment spam trickery and being stupid. So, here goes: Chummy Steinmeier flying high - the swamp things laisse les bon temps rouler! Stuff the ol' Turducken all by yourself! Jambalaya!

..."semi-boneless turkey." Couldn't have found anything better myself to name this bespectacled Eurocrat belle du jour.

...homophobe, me? Nope, just, uh, poking fun.