Every now and then, the concept of a "Bush Doctrine" has been bantered about, usually by the Sunday morning talking heads who are always attempting to put the week's minor political squabbles into grand themes in which they rarely fit well in retrospect.
It is generally agreed that the Bush Doctrine (in the tradition of the Monroe Doctrine and the Truman Doctrine) states that the United States is free to use whatever force is necessary to destroy terrorist networks and the governments that fund or harbor them.
That might be a good doctrine, but it isn't the Bush Doctrine. If it was, we would be occupying Saudi Arabia and interrogating Yasser Arafat at Camp X-Ray. For all of his moral certitude, Bush is quite capable of seeing shades of gray when it suits his interests.
If Bush really viewed our national mandate as the destruction of terrorism and the facilitation of the spread of democracy, we wouldn't be placating the Saudis, who recently held a telethon for Palestinian suicide bombers (I never got the memo that said they are now called "homicide bombers").
So what is the Bush Doctrine? Phrased as simply as possible, it says that the United States may use any diplomatic or political means necissary to ensure the continued flow of oil from the wells of the world into the tanks of our Suburbans, Escalades and Navigators.
One of the more glaring examples of the Bush Doctrine in action was in our reaction to the coup and counter-coup in Venezuela.
Consider yourself forgiven for not knowing much about it -the protests leading up to the coup, the coup, the installation of the new government, the fatal errors of the new government, the counter-insurgency and the restoration of the democratically-elected president all took place in the space of four days last week.
Here's a very short summary: Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, managed, through a series of wacky populist policies, to disturb most of his population, especially big business and organized labor interests. A general strike escalated to street protests, which turned violence. Depending on who you asked, either Chavez supporters shot into the defenseless crowd or members of the crowd first shot at Chavez supporters. Either way, the military turned on Chavez, arrested him and installed Pedro Carmona Estanga, a former oil executive. Most people cheered the end of Chavez's reactionary and largely incompetent rule, until the Carmona government voided the constitution and dissolved Parliament and the Supreme Court.
After seeing what a government run by a former oil executive was willing to do to democracy (sound familiar?), the situation rapidly reversed itself. A pro-Chavez insurrection in Maracay expanded, and by the end of the weekend, Chavez was back in power.
During this entire affair, leaders from across the Western hemisphere decried the coup. Except for the U.S. White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said "the actions encouraged by the Chavez government provoked a crisis." Translated into English, he is saying that the whole mess was Chavez's fault.
Now for the real back story. Venezuela is the third largest exporter of oil to the United States. Under Chavez, production dropped because of the strike. As soon as the Carmona government took power, oil prices dropped on hopes that the government would ignore OPEC production limits.
The oldest continuous democracy in the world found itself in the position of choosing a dictator over a democratically elected government in order to keep the oil flowing.
An enlightened foreign policy that encourages stability would recognize that democracies sometimes do things we don't like, but that it's all right as long as they don't directly threaten our security.
For Bush, the price of gas is too important to leave to a force as hard to control as the will of a free people.
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