Sarah Palin Interview Excerpts (Long)
Nick Gillespie | September 12, 2008, 7:17am
GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin sat down with Charlie Gibson of ABC for her first big post-nomination interview.
Here's a chunk of exceprts courtesy of the (U.K.) Times:
GIBSON: And you didn't say to yourself, "Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I - will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?"
PALIN: I didn't hesitate, no.
GIBSON: Didn't that take some hubris?
PALIN: I - I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink.
So I didn't blink then even when asked to run as his running mate....
GIBSON: Did you ever travel outside the country prior to your trip to Kuwait and Germany last year?
PALIN: Canada, Mexico, and then, yes, that trip, that was the trip of a lifetime to visit our troops in Kuwait and stop and visit our injured soldiers in Germany. That was the trip of a lifetime and it changed my life.
GIBSON: Have you ever met a foreign head of state?
PALIN: There in the state of Alaska, our international trade activities bring in many leaders of other countries.
GIBSON: And all governors deal with trade delegations.
PALIN: Right.
GIBSON: Who act at the behest of their governments.
PALIN: Right, right.
GIBSON: I'm talking about somebody who's a head of state, who can negotiate for that country. Ever met one?
PALIN: I have not and I think if you go back in history and if you ask that question of many vice presidents, they may have the same answer that I just gave you. ...
GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln's words, but you went on and said, "There is a plan and it is God's plan."
PALIN: I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given, Charlie, and I believe that those are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That, in my world view, is a grand - the grand plan.
GIBSON: But then are you sending your son on a task that is from God?
PALIN: I don't know if the task is from God, Charlie. What I know is that my son has made a decision. I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer....
We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We've learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.
We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it's in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.
GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?
PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.
GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.
PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.
Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...
GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?
PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.
More here.
Based on the bits I saw, and the incredibly tedious, partisan commentary on last night's yak shows, I'd say Palin easily passed the Quayle test (that is, she didn't completely bomb) but failed to rise far enough above that baseline to completely silence critics (as she did with her GOP convention speech). Shockingly, the folks in the tank for the GOP said she was great, and the Dem types thought she was stunningly bad (she clearly flubbed more than a few answers); the big fooferaw coming out this will be whether Gibson deliberately misrepresented various on-a-mission-from-God quotes, which will focus the post-interview debate on media bias (a win for the GOP).
If nothing else, this interview may signal a shift back to discussing the top of the tickets, though last night's national service-a-thon forum with McBama was a grimly awful affair whose basic premise—ask not what your country can do for you but what you can be forced to do for your country—should remind libertarians and liberty-loving folks everywhere just how few people get the whole freedom-from-serving-in-other-people's-grand-schemes point of this country.
joe | September 12, 2008, 9:53am | #
LoL, RC. Yup, misspelling "Einstein" is a pretty good example
John,
How imminent was the threat of missiles in Cuba? Very imminent. The Air Force was placed on high alert over the threat. In addition, the Monroe Doctrine was in effect, which has long been used to justify action in this hemisphere on the basis of foreign hegemony, not the imminence of a threat. Heck, we backed proxies in an invasion of Cuba shortly before that episode, when there was no threat whatsoever, based on the Monroe Doctrine, not a pre-emption doctrine.
How imminent was the threat of Iraq in 1998? We were already doing flyovers and bombing runs in Iraq in 1998, and had been for years. Operation Desert Fox wasn't undertaken based on any preemptive doctrine, and no pre-emption case was made by the White House.
These examples stand in marked contrast to the Iraq War, which was explicitly justified by the administration based on the need to pre-empt the threat of Iraq passing WMDs to a terrorist group, or using them against us directly.
The Israeli bombing of the reactor in the early 80s is another example of pre-emption. Of prevention/anticipatory self-defense, you mean. The Israeli attack on Egypt's air force in 1972, when Egyptian tanks were massing on the border, is an example of pre-emption. Yes, the Osirik attack was an example of anticiopatory self-defense by Israel. That has long been their doctrine. It was not ours until 2002, when the Bush Doctrine was enunciated.
The issue of pre-emption is always what is "imminent". Under the previous, longstanding pre-emption doctrine, you are corrrect. Under the Bush Doctrine, "We cannot wait for a threat to become imminent. The smoking gun may be a mushroom cloud over an American city." You seem to be backing off on your support for this doctrine, John. Am I reading you right?
joe | September 12, 2008, 10:26am | #
It is semantics and Bush's speech writers not knowing what they are talking about.
But it wasn't just a line in a speech. The concept was articulated in the national defense policy doctrine issued in 2002 - that we would pre-empt potential, not just existing, threats.
What is imminent and what is "anticipatory self defense"? Imminent means there is an existing threat and we will strike them before they strike us. Anticapatory self-defense means there is not currently threat, but there could be one in the future.
I would argue that it is all anticipatory self defense since you are attacking the other guy before he attacks you. Anticipatory self defense meang launching an attack before there is any possiblity of the other guy attacking you. It is used, like the Osirik attack or the invasion of Iraq, to prevent the other guy from developing the capability of being able to attack you.
They are both similar, as you say, in that they both involve hitting the other guy first. Traditional pre-emption requires the other guy trying to hit you. The Bush Doctrine of preventive war is to hit the other guy before he even attempts to hit you, or even, hitting him before he is even capable of hitting you.
No matter where you are, you argue that the threat is "imminent" you just have a different definition of imminent. Once again, I will repeat myself: Bush and Cheney, on multiple occasions in in official policy documents, stated that imminence is NO LONGER TO BE THE CRITERIA for determining when to attack. They specifically stated that "we cannot wait for the threat to be imminent." Not my words, not my judgement that the threat wasn't imminent enough - their words, their doctrine.
Cuba, was not imminent in a lot of ways. They were just putting the missiles there. There was no indication they had plans to actually fire them at us. Once again, Monroe doctrine. We have long asserted a doctrine of using force in this hemisphere completely unrelated to the imminence of a threat to the United States itself, but to the expansion of foreign powers into the Americas. I'll note that we did not take similar action against other Soviet missile installations that could hit us, when they were in other parts of the world.
Another way to put this is that the Cuban missiles DID pose an imminent threat to us - not an imminent threat of an attack on our homeland, but to a different national interest, the threat of a foreign power projecting military force into the Americas.
As far as Iraq goes, we were basically at war with Iraq in 1998. So maybe that is not the best example. Agreed, but to make one other point here: Bush could have made the case for an Iraq invasion in 2002 on the same grounds that Clinton used in 1998, and left it at that, and our pre-emption doctrine would not have changed. However, he chose not to - he chose to articulate a new pre-emption doctrine, in addition to Iraq's violation of the cease fire agreement i/r/t weapons inspections. This is because it wasn't just an argument he made to sell the Iraq War, but was intended to be a generally-applicable policy statement.
But bombing the Sudan and Afghanistan in 1999 sure is. The rules for non-state actors are different. There has always been a much lower standard to meet when dealing with "pirates and bandits."
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