Reihan complains that critics of Palin on her Bush Doctrine answer probably could not define it very well, either.  Whether that is true of other critics or not, I cannot say, but before taking a stab at it I will reiterate my point that the existence of divergent interpretations of the Doctrine does not excuse not knowing anything about it.  Clearly, Palin knew nothing, so the fact that other people disagree about what exactly falls under this Doctrine is neither here nor there when discussing Palin’s answers.  Indeed, the argument made in her “defense” is that Gibson also got it wrong.  The telling part of the interview, then, is when Palin agreed with the definition Gibson gave, which Palin’s defenders are insisting was wrong.  She didn’t know this definition was wrong, because she had no idea what it was.  So what is the right definition? 

The Bush Doctrine evolved somewhat between late 2001 and September 2002 with the National Security Strategy of that year.   Before September 2002, the Bush Doctrine would have been understood to mean that the U.S. government would treat terrorist-sponsoring nations as culpable for any acts carried out by the groups they sponsored or harbored, and that they would be treated as enemies of the United States accordingly.  This initial form of the Doctrine served well enough to make sense of the intervention in Afghanistan against both the government and the terrorist group they were harboring.  Indeed, you could say that this first draft Bush Doctrine was tailor-made to support what we were doing in Afghanistan.  The 2002 strategy statement was really the first official statement of a doctrine during the Bush years.  Mr. Bush enunciated the Doctrine at West Point.  In that statement, the government claimed the right to launch wars against states that might pose future threats to the United States:

And, as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed [bold mine-DL].  We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. So we must be prepared to defeat our enemies’ plans, using the best intelligence and proceeding with deliberation. History will judge harshly those who saw this coming danger but failed to act. In the new world we have entered, the only path to peace and security is the path of action.  

This is preventive war, which is illegal under any form of international law known to man, but it was routinely defended by calling it pre-emptive war, which is permitted under certain circumstances.  What is often linked to the Bush Doctrine, but which is not necessarily part of it, is the democracy promotion element of the so-called “freedom agenda,” which holds that democratic governments are inherently more peaceful, less likely to sponsor or harbor terrorists and more likely to maintain good relations with the United States, so that there is a national security interest in promoting democracy.  None of these propositions is true, but that has been the rhetoric.  This democracy-promotion element was an ancillary justification for the invasion of Iraq based on the “drain the swamp” theory espoused by many of the President’s backers, but it acquired full force in the Second Inaugural, even though events in the last three years have largely made a mockery of the pretensions of that speech.     

One might forgive Gibson for confusing the Bush Doctrine with support for pre-emptive war, when this is what President Bush said we were doing in Iraq.  In June 2002, Mr. Bush said:

And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives. 

And again:

While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of selfdefense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country…

Yet in the same June address Mr. Bush makes clear that he is describing preventive war:

We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten [bold mine-DL] or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends.

In the same address when he calls for pre-emptive action, he makes it clear that he is redefining what permissible pre-emption is supposed to be:

For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack. Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat—most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack.

We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries. Rogue states and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction—weapons that can be easily concealed, delivered covertly, and used without warning.  

So it’s true that Bush administration has warped and twisted the words pre-emptive and imminent beyond recognition to serve its purposes, and confusingly referred to preventive war as pre-emption, which are the likely reasons why Gibson’s definition was imprecise.  As I have said before, when Gibson referred to anticipatory self-defense he was using the same phrase that supporters of preventive war have used to describe preventive war (e.g., in connection with bombing Iran), and the reason they use this phrase is to justify the unjustifiable.  Having muddled the definitions and engaged in misdirection, these same people now point at Gibson and laugh because he made the mistake of repeating their own words.