In an editorial, the Anchorage Daily News wrote:

“It’s stunning that someone with so little national and international experience might be heartbeat away from the presidency.”

“She’s a total beginner on national and international issues.”

Palin never had never been overseas until last year. Her spokesperson said this past year Palin visited troops in Iraq, Kuwait and Germany and also visited Ireland:

Kuwait was Palin’s first trip overseas

Last year, Gov. Sarah Palin journeyed abroad to visit 500 members of the Alaska Army National Guard who were stationed 15 months in Northern Kuwait.

She also stopped at a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, to visit wounded Alaskans, including regular Army troops based at Fort Richardson.

The journey marked the first time that Palin had ever traveled overseas, according to Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow.

The Ottowa Citizen reported:

Questioned about her lack of foreign exposure of any kind, the governor’s spokesman replied that Palin had been to four countries overseas — Iraq, Kuwait, Germany and Ireland — as part of a single trip abroad to visit Alaska National Guard troops.

But The Politico reported:

The Ireland trip was a refueling stop on her trip to military installations in Germany and Kuwait, spokeswoman Maria Comella said.

And The Irish Times and others news outlets reported: that the Iraq claim had either been made up or embellished:

The story of Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s trip to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait and Iraq began to shrink under scrutiny. Interrogated about hazy details of the itinerary – the first time she had travelled outside of North America – campaign officials acknowledged that Ms Palin had not entered Iraq, but had instead visited Alaska national guard troops on the Kuwait border.

While governor, Palin said very little about the war in Iraq and said that she was more focused on Alaska’s government. When asked in an interview with Alaska Business Monthly about America’s involvement in the Iraq war, Palin said, “I’ve been so focused on state government, I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.”

During her commencement address at the Wasilla Assembly of God, Palin asked students to pray for the men and women in the military and to make sure that the nation’s leaders are sending American soldiers “out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

View the video here:

The pastor of the church, Ed Kalnins, has preached that the invasion of Iraq are part of a “world war” over the Christian faith and that God favored invading Iraq.

Palin was baptized at the church, and worshiped there most of her adult life, though moved her family to a non-denominational church recently. Since then, Kalnins said Palin “has maintained a friendship with Wasilla Assembly of God and has attended various conferences and special meetings here.”

Palins told the congregation in June. “What comes from this church I think has great destiny. ... God has sent me from underneath the umbrella of this church throughout this state.”

After being nominated, Palin equated the war in Iraq with 9-11. The Washington Post reported:

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

In a speech to Iraq-bound troops on September 11 2008, Palin again equated war in Iraq with the terrorist attacks:

McClatchy has more on the lack of any link between Iraq and the September 11 attacks:

The bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States said it found “no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States.”

The panel also said that contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq before the attacks “do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.”

The group’s conclusion confirmed similar findings by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. President Bush, who once claimed such a pre 9-11 connection to Iraq, has since backed off.

The Anchorage Daily News:

When presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate Friday, the Arizona senator emphasized her role as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard.

Later, when questions were raised about Palin’s lack of experience in national or international affairs, the McCain campaign pointed again to her military command experience as governor. Some reporters have tried to follow up.

...

But the governor has no command authority overseas — or anywhere in the United States other than Alaska, says Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell, the service commander of the Alaska National Guard.

“When members of the National Guard are federalized, they work for the president,” Campbell said Wednesday. “It’s not just overseas. They could be federalized to go to other states, or they could even be federalized in the state.”

Occasions in which Palin does retain command authority over the 4,200-member Alaska National Guard are whenever the guard responds to in-state natural disasters and civic emergencies, said Campbell, who also serves as commissioner of the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

Some examples?

“We’ve deployed individuals in state service all over the state under Sarah Palin,” he said. “We had defense men down in Seward for the (Mount) Marathon run doing security.

“Out west and northwest we had erosion problems and the National Guard was involved in some of the protection out there. About three days ago, the Army National Guard picked up a lady from Little Diomede … at the request of state troopers.”

Did Palin directly approve each of those activities?

No, Campbell said. The governor has granted him authority to act on his own in most cases, including life-or-death emergencies when a quick response is required, or minor day-to-day operations.

“Some authorities have been given to me that she has acknowledged that I can execute,” he said. “For others I have to ask her each time.”

The recent decision to deploy a C-17 cargo plane from the Alaska Air National Guard to Louisiana to assist during the Hurricane Gustav response was an occasion in which he briefed the governor’s office and sought its approval, Campbell said. But in that case, chief of staff Mike Nizich signed off on the deployment.

The flooding that occurred in Fairbanks in late July — in which the guard sent water trucks north to provide clean drinking water — didn’t require the governor’s approval, Campbell said.

Natural disasters are fairly sporadic, says Jeremy Zidek, public information officer for the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, which is part of Campbell’s department.

Last year, during Palin’s first year as governor, there wasn’t much action, Zidek said. “Thankfully we didn’t have any major disasters.”

Former Gov. Bill Egan used National Guard troops after the 1964 Good Friday earthquake. Former Gov. Tony Knowles did the same to help fight a wildfire that destroyed residences in the Mat-Su area in 1996.

Having served as governor from 1994 to 2002, Knowles considers his command of the Alaska National Guard one of the most important jobs he had. But he deferred a lot to the adjutant general he placed in charge, Knowles said.

“I had more military action in one week when I was in the Army as a sergeant (in Vietnam) than I had as commander in chief for eight years,” he said.

Cindy McCain and some in the media have said Palin has foreign policy experience because Alaska is closer to Russia than the other 49 states. The eastern half of Russia is barely populated. It is widely known Russia and the western half of the country is the center of power and population in Russia. Anchorage is 4,351 miles from Moscow. By comparison, New York city is 4,668 miles from Moscow.

Some have noted that while Florida is as close to Cuba as Alaska is to Russia, it doesn’t mean people from there have more foreign policy experience or knowledge.

The Chicago Tribune reported:

Clearly, Sarah Palin didn’t get the meaning of the term, “the Bush Doctrine.” But just as clearly, she supports it.

For supporters of Palin, the Alaska governor whom the Republican Party has nominated for vice president, the lack of recognition for a fairly common term inside the beltway of Washington for a strategy formulated by Bush’s National Security Council in the fall of 2002 could be considered a badge of maverick honor.

For supporters as well, her certain belief in the underlying tenet of the justification that President Bush used to wage a preemptive war in Iraq should also bring some cheer.

For critics, the gotcha moment in ABC’s interview with Palin is a clear lesson in how little attention the first-term governor of Alaska has paid to affairs which, as vice president and potentially president, she would quickly be expected to comprehend.

For critics as well, Palin’s clear aliegiance to the underlying principal of the doctrine, despite her failure to recognize the name on the political media equivalent of a Jeopardy board – “Charlie, I’ll take foreign policy for $1,000” – will also serve as fodder for the Obama campaign argument that McCain and Palin represent “more of the same.”

Thomas Donnelly wrote for the American Enterprise Institute in January 2003: “If nothing else, the Bush Doctrine, articulated by the president over the past eighteen months in a series of speeches and encapsulated in the new National Security Strategy paper released in September, represents a reversal of course from Clinton-era policies in regard to the uses of U.S. power and, especially, military force.

“So perhaps it is no surprise that many Americans—and others in the rest of the world as well—are struggling to keep up with the changes.”

But that was more than five years ago.