For a while now, foreign policy minded liberals have been arguing the strengths and weaknesses of the Bush Doctrine. Does the doctrine of pre-emption make us safer? Does it set a dangerous precedent in the international community? These are all good strong questions to ask, but I am afraid they miss the point. The questions assume a premise: that the Bush Doctrine is a real sincere foreign policy stance held by our President. I am here to say categorically that it is not. The Bush Doctrine is a slice of rhetoric; nothing more, nothing less.

If the Bush doctrine is the norm by which the U.S. makes its foreign policy decisions, then it seems to me that we would have invaded Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Sudan, and Somalia years before we would have invaded Iraq. Those nations harbor far more terrorists than Saddam ever did.In fact, the War in Iraq exists as the only case where the criteria for the Bush doctrine was ever applied. All we heard for months was how Saddam was harboring terrorists and WMD’s and that we needed to invade before Iraq it became an immediate threat. The fact that the rationale to enter the war has retroactively changed should indicate that if the Bush doctrine ever was real (and of that, I am skeptical) that it is now dead as roadkill.

This might seem a bit perplexing. How can the Bush Doctrine not be real? Why would the Bush administration adopt a hostile policy unpopular with the international community for only rhetorical purposes? The statement that “we shall make no distinction between terrorists and states that harbor and support terrorism” is a line often used by many senior members of the Bush administration, including the President himself. This line of thinking has brought the White House much criticism since 9/11. Why not adopt another foreign policy slogan? I’m convinced that politically the doctrine served three major purposes for the administration:

1) It helped court more votes from law-and-order type consevratives who saw the President willing to do “whatever it takes” to keep this country safe.
2) It appeased those critics who said the War on Terror was a War on Islam
3) It put the Democrats on the defensive. If liberals disagreed with the Doctrine, it made them appear weak and unwilling to do “whatever it takes” to keep the country safe.

Now, whether we should invade Saudi Arabia or Pakistan is a difficult question, but one worth asking. I’m afraid it won’t be the proud parents of the B.D. asking it though.