I debated writing this post, recognizing that the title is provocative and considering how much a fan I am of Rachel Maddow, as a quick perusal of some of my previous diaries would demonstrate.
Additionally, other Kossacks have tackled the subject: It's Not The Bush Doctrine; Obama: War President?!
But in the spirit of vigorous debate exemplified by this site over the past couple days, it’s important to call out a major thinking error even when it’s from someone whom I consider one of the smartest political analysts on cable.
Last night, following President Obama’s West Point speech, Rachel opened a segment suggesting that our new escalation in Afghanistan is somehow an extension of the Bush Doctrine: a fatuous argument that corrodes our understanding of the last eight disastrous years.
Video after the jump.
It [the Bush Doctrine] may have survived the Bush presidency. President Obama tonight explaining his second escalation of the war in Afghanistan, announcing that the 32,000 Americans who were in Afghanistan when he took office will become 100,000 by next year. A war reborn in what the president is describing as his own image--his own strategic terms. But which is justified fundamentally by what sounds like the Bush doctrine. The administration admitting that we are not actually threatened now as a nation by Afghanistan.
[snip]
Is the massive escalation of the war in Afghanistan announced tonight President Obama’s own implementation of the preventive war Bush doctrine...? This war is not about threats to the United States from Afghanistan. To the extent that it is justified by preventing threats to us from emerging from Pakistan, sometime in the future, that’s preventive war. That’s the Bush doctrine, in all its Orwellian extremism.
Actually, no. The Bush Doctrine was a maxim for preventive war: conventional forces, territorial invasion, and new wars to face hypothetical and distant threats.
If I understand Rachel, the fact that the words "prevent threats" appear in Obama’s justification somehow constitute the definition of "preventive war." Prevent! There, he said it!
What’s the big difference in Afghanistan? Well, first of all, we’re already there.
Second of all, we were actually attacked by Al Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, enabled by the Taliban. These same Al Qaeda leaders fled into Pakistan. They are plotting attacks either against the United States, our allies in other parts of the world, or against the Pakistani government. This isn’t an abstract or hypothetical threat, and the possibility of them retrenching in a collapsed Afghanistan or Pakistan is not the same as making up Saddam-Al Qaeda-WMD justifications out of whole cloth.
Here’s how Dan Froomkin described the Bush Doctrine last year in the Washington Post:
But Gibson was making a common error, and what Palin said in her response did not actually address what was so radical about Bush's contribution to American foreign policy. Preemption has in fact been a staple of our foreign policy for ages -- and other countries' as well. The twist Bush put on it was embracing "preventive" war: Taking action well before an attack was imminent -- invading a country that was simply perceived as threatening.
One can argue that Al Qaeda is so crippled and contained, they no longer present enough of a threat to justify pursuing them further with conventional and covert forces. I would disagree, but that statement is not the same as a sweeping comparison between Obama’s Afghan surge and the Bush Doctrine.
There is no comparison between increasing a commitment in a country we already occupy and launching a preventive invasion of a sovereign country based on "grave and gathering" threats as we did in Iraq.
If the Iraq invasion, potentially the most disastrous foreign policy decision in the modern history of the United States, was indisputably an application of the Bush Doctrine, then comparing it to Obama’s decision in Afghanistan is a rhetorical and logical overreach that’s toxic for us evaluating the wisdom of Obama’s strategy. Worse, it glosses over the radicalism of the Bush years and the true sins of the policy he and Cheney inflicted on the rest of the world.
Not being able to tell like from like makes it easier for progressives to dismiss progress made under Obama. That’s our business.
But we give the Bush cronies rhetorical cover at our own peril. If what Bush did is no worse than Obama, then what real claim do we have that Bush veterans shouldn’t return to power? Furthermore, does anyone think that a Bush crony wouldn’t deploy the same obfuscation to cover his own crimes?
The sad part about the segment was that Rachel used it to lead into a discussion about the covert war in Pakistan. The Pakistani component to this war, the CIA’s role, and the effect of drone strikes across the border has received scant coverage in the popular press. The issue deserved its own treatment, but the seriousness of the topic was compromised with the logical looseness of the Bush Doctrine introduction.
Disagree with the policy all you want. But avoid these kind of slippery excesses.
Rachel is much smarter than this, which is why the segment was so disappointing.
In other news, Rachel’s or her producer’s decision to introduce the Bush Doctrine with Sarah Palin’s ABC interview with Charlie Gibson was pure genious.
In what respect, Charlie?
Feel free to flame away. Got nothin’ but love for ya, Rachel.