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Obama Doctrine? He Just Borrowed Bush's

His Mideast plan is the same as his predecessor's: Charles Krauthammer

By John Johnson, Newser Staff

Posted May 20, 2011 12:40 PM CDT

(Newser) – Analysts keep looking to define an Obama Doctrine, but after listening to the president's Mideast speech yesterday, Charles Krauthammer thinks it's easy: The Obama Doctrine is the Bush Doctrine, Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post. Bush "made the spread of democracy the key US objective in the Middle East," and Obama is fully on board. He even praised Iraq yesterday as a beacon of democracy for the region. All "hail the Bush-Obama doctrine."

When Obama said the US must respect the "self-determination of individuals" along with the "stability of nations," he actually offered "a fine critique of exactly the kind of 'realism' the Obama administration prided itself for having practiced in its first two years," writes Krauthammer, who offers his parsing of key lines. As for Obama's embrace of Israel's 1967 borders: "True, that idea has been the working premise for negotiations since 2000. But no president had ever before publicly and explicitly endorsed the 1967 lines."

President Obama speaks at the Women's Leadership Forum in Washington Thursday. (Getty Images)

President Obama speaks during a Women's Leadership Forum Thursday in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

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Obama Doctrine? He Just Borrowed Bush's

His Mideast plan is the same as his predecessor's: Charles Krauthammer

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Barack Obama • Mideast • George W. Bush • President Obama • Bush doctrine • Arab revolution • Obama doctrine

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