This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, March 28, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

President Obama admires Colin Powell, though it's not clear what the President has learned from the

general's wisdom in military matters.

Chris Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, says the Weinberger-Powell

doctrine, which asks for compelling national interests, broad support at home and abroad, and an achievable

goal is now officially dead.

Casper Weinberger was President Reagan's first Secretary of Defense and his principal aid was Colin Powell.

In 1984, after the Lebanon intervention, the Marine Merrick's bombing and related

unpleasantness.

Secretary Weinberger and Powell attempted to articulate a series of kind of criteria

to prevent the deployment of forces for similar missions and those criteria included.

A clear military objective and therefore some semblance of an exit strategy.

The strong support of the American people and they stipulated also international public opinion was important.

It's usually boiled down to something in the effect of overwhelming force and things like that.

They also have had a stipulation that force be a last option, again not a revolutionary concept,

this has been around for hundreds of years.

And they, most importantly in my mind, is they stipulated that there must be some compelling U.S. national

interest at stake. It's that part I think of all the criteria that has become

most blurry over the years, Even in the most recent case, in the Libya case, the President

says that the U.S. national interest is the prevention of slaughter against Libyan

civilians many thousands of miles away. of It's not a tangible U.S. security objective. The president's never claimed that it is.

...