The “Palin Doctrine”: Obama follows Mama Grizzly to war in Libya

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 3/18/11

On March 11, 2011, Wesley K. Clark, former NATO chief, penned an op-ed in the Washington Post to say that Libya doesn’t meet the test for U.S. military action. General Clark’s statement suggested a division in liberal opinion brewing and two days later former advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Anne-Marie Slaughter, challenged his view in the New York Times saying “Colonel Qaddafi makes the most of the world’s dithering and steadily retakes rebel-held towns.” She called for a no-fly zone and discussed five main arguments against, none of which, she said, held up. Yesterday, President Obama and Secretary Clinton got their no-fly zone.

What I thought was odd about this discussion was that it appeared to begin in the mainstream press only with Clark’s thoughtful opposition while one major political figure likely to enter the presidential race of 2012 had already discussed a no-fly zone on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show: Sarah Palin.

There was no lengthy discussion or response elsewhere. To the MSM, she wasn’t there again today!

But this Wednesday, Benjamin Korn, director of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin had a post in the New York’s “The Sun” coining the phrase “Palin Doctrine.”

In an article titled “Palin Doctrine Emerges as Arab League Echoes Her Demarche on Libya” he writes: “The call by the Arab League for Western military intervention in an Arab state — in this case asking that a UN ‘no-fly zone’ be imposed over Libya – is not only without precedent but it puts in formal terms what Governor Palin stated three weeks ago should have been America’s response to the political and humanitarian crisis now unfolding there.”

Palin had proposed a no-fly-zone to protest the armed and un-armed opposition to the Qaddafi regime on February 23, writes Korn.

The Palin Doctrine, writes Korn, “ . . . contrasts sharply with the foreign policy being conducted, if that is the word, by President Obama, who is perplexing not only the Arab world, to which he reached out in his Cairo speech at the start of his presidency, but even his own supporters in the liberal camp, and many in between, who are upset by what might be called his propensity for inaction. It’s an inaction that suggests the Arab League won’t be the only institution that might find itself surprised by the logic of the alert Alaskan.”