Charles Krauthammer

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Charles Krauthammer (born 13 March 1950), is an American neoconservative, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, and commentator. Krauthammer appears regularly as a guest commentator on Fox News. His print work appears in the Washington Post, Time magazine, The Weekly Standard and publications such as The Irish Times.

Contents 1 Career 2 Opinions 2.1 “Unipolar World” 2.2 Democratic realism 2.3 War in Iraq 2.4 President's Council on Bioethics 2.5 Religion 2.6 Miers nomination 2.7 Israel 2.8 Torture 2.9 Neoconservatism 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Career

Krauthammer was born in Uruguay^[1] to Jewish parents. He was raised in Montreal where he attended McGill University and obtained an honors degree in political science and economics in 1970. From 1970 to 1971, he was a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford. He later moved to the United States. In his freshman year at Harvard Medical School in 1972, Krauthammer was paralyzed in a serious diving accident.^[2] Continuing medical training during his rehabilitation, he earned an M.D. from Harvard University's medical school in 1975, and worked as a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In 1978, Krauthammer quit medical practice to direct planning in psychiatric research for the Jimmy Carter administration, and began contributing to the magazine The New Republic. During the presidential campaign of 1980, Krauthammer served as a speech writer to Vice President Walter Mondale. In 1985, he wrote one of his most influential essays, “The Reagan Doctrine”,^[3] which first introduced that term. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for commentary.

Krathammer's forceful advocacy of sometimes controversial views has divided opinion; according to American Prospect:

Krauthammer is very possibly the worst journalist working in America today, a relentlessly pernicious force, never right about anything, who feels his commentary should not be shackled by the small-minded bonds of accuracy or logic.[4]

[edit] Opinions

[edit] “Unipolar World”

Krauthammer is a defender of unilateralism and maintains that as a superpower, the U.S. should assert its positions and invite others to join. He believes that “the notion that legitimacy derives from international consensus” is a political absurdity in what he calls the “unipolar world” dominated by US foreign policy.^[5] In 2002, Krauthammer articulated "a new type of realism", writing: “Unilateralism is the high road to multilateralism […] No one wants to be left on the dock when the hegemon is sailing.”^[6]

[edit] Democratic realism

In May 2004 Krauthammer gave a speech to the American Enterprise Institute titled “Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World”.^[7] He advocated a combination of realist and neoconservative foreign policy stances as the best way to defend American interests and spread democracy. Krauthammer's essay defending his theory against Francis Fukuyama's criticism appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of The National Interest.

In early 2006 Fukuyama pointedly distanced himself from the Iraq War, noting that Krauthammer was a key supporter of the war and citing the “Democratic Realism” speech. Fukuyama asserted that Krauthammer referred to the Iraq war as “a virtually unqualified success” in that same speech. Krauthammer does not deny having been a supporter of the war, but vigorously denied Fukuyama's other claim,^[8] asserting that he was never sure that the Iraq War would succeed, only that such wars are the best means available, since diplomacy or other means were almost bound to be useless.

Krauthammer has written in opposition to the Clinton Doctrine, which advocated U.S. humanitarian intervention in troubled regions of the world, even where there was no significant strategic interest involved. The Clinton administration applied this policy to Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, where a U.S.-led NATO intervened to end ethnic cleansing and violence. The Clinton doctrine also led to the U.S. involvement in Somalia in 1993, where 18 American soldiers and hundreds of Somalis were killed, with no benefit to either country. In a 1999 Time magazine article, Krauthammer wrote:

The essence of foreign policy is deciding which son of a bitch to support and which to oppose — in 1941, Hitler or Stalin; in 1972, Brezhnev or Mao; in 1979, Somoza or Ortega. One has to choose. A blanket anti-son of a bitch policy, like a blanket anti-ethnic cleansing policy, is soothing, satisfying and empty. It is not a policy at all but righteous self-delusion.[9]

[edit] War in Iraq

Krauthammer was an enthusiastic advocate for the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. In the aftermath of the invasion, in August 2003, he predicted:

With its oil, its urbanized middle class, its educated population, its essential modernity, Iraq has a future.... Once its political and industrial infrastructures are reestablished, Iraq's potential for rebound, indeed for explosive growth, is unlimited.[10]

[edit] President's Council on Bioethics

Appointed to the President George W. Bush's President's Council on Bioethics in 2002, Krauthammer has opposed human experimentation, human cloning and euthanasia^[11] but supports relaxing the Bush administration's limits on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.^[12]

Krauthammer may have a unique perspective on stem cell research, being a paraplegic himself. A fellow member of the Council, Janet D. Rowley, insists that Krauthammer's vision is still an issue far in the future and not a topic to be discussed at the present time,^[13] yet many council members tend to agree with Krauthammer.

[edit] Religion

Krauthammer is a critic of “Intelligent Design”, and wrote several articles in 2005 likening it to “tarted-up creationism”.^[14]

He has received a number of awards for his commentary related to religion, including the People for the American Way’s First Amendment Award for his New Republic essay “America's Holy Wars”.^[15] in 1985, and the Guardian of Zion Award of Bar-Ilan University in 2002.^[16]

[edit] Miers nomination

Krauthammer was among the many conservatives who criticized President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to succeed Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. He called the nomination of Miers a “mistake” on several occasions. He noted her lack of constitutional experience as the main obstacle to her nomination.

On 21 October 2005, Charles Krauthammer published “Miers: The Only Exit Strategy”,^[17] in which he explained that all of Miers' relevant constitutional writings are protected by both attorney/client privilege and executive privilege. The only face-saving solution to the “mistake” would be if “Miers withdraws out of respect for both the Senate and the executive's prerogatives”. On 27 October 2005, Miers indeed withdrew her candidacy for the Supreme Court.

[edit] Israel

Krauthammer has been a defender of the right-wing Likud party in Israel, though he is more likely to support the centrist Kadima party as he is generally in favor of withdrawal. He believes in the importance of a barrier between the two states' final borders as an important element of any peace.

In a July 2006 essay in Time magazine, Krauthammer asserted that the Israel-Palestine conflict was fundamentally defined by the Palestinians' unwillingness to accept compromise. He rejects the “cycle of violence” model as an “arrow” that is shot by Palestinians with Israel as its target.^{[verification needed]} Breaking away from views held by some of the U.S.'s most conservative commentators such as Robert Novak and Pat Buchanan, he assigns virtually all of the blame to the Palestinians.

[edit] Torture

In an article appearing on 5 December 2005 in the Weekly Standard,^[18] Krauthammer argues that any ban of torture must entail at least two exceptions. He claims that in both the situation of imminent danger (“ticking time bomb scenario”) and in the case of a high-level terrorist deeply involved in the planning of future attacks, the moral calculus not only allows but mandates the use of torture, if it is believed that torture can procure life-saving information.

This column appeared amidst the controversy surrounding Senator John McCain's proposed ban on torture in an Amendment on the U.S. Army Field Manuals and Cruel, Inhumane, Degrading Treatment. (Many pundits wrote on this issue; Andrew Sullivan's article in the New Republic was seen as a counter to Krauthammer's Weekly Standard piece.^[19] Other responses include Michael Kinsley in Slate Magazine ^[20] and the Wall Street Journal editorial.^[21])

[edit] Neoconservatism

In a high profile piece in Commentary, Krauthammer wrote that “above all”, neoconservativism “is the maturation of a governing ideology whose time has come”. The original “fathers of neoconservatism” were “former liberals or leftists”. More recently, they have been joined by “realists, newly mugged by reality”, such as Condoleezza Rice, Richard Cheney and George W. Bush, who “have given weight to neoconservatism, making it more diverse and, given the newcomers’ past experience, more mature”. The “Bush Doctrine”, according to Krauthammer, is essentially “a synonym for neoconservative foreign policy”.^[22]

Francis Fukuyama, who as of spring 2006 described himself as a former neoconservative, has been critical of Krauthammer. Fukuyama associates Krauthammer with the neoconservative movement, due to Krauthammer's support and positive portrayal of the Iraq War.^[23] Krauthammer has responded to Fukuyama denunciation of neoconservatism and of his criticism of Krauthammer by accusing him of fabrication.^[24]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Charles Krauthammer's Weekly Column in the Washington Post
• Charles Krauthammer Archives at Jewish World Review
• Krauthammer's profile in Right Web
• Today's most ardent American imperialists weren't born in the USA. by Jeet Hee.
• "A Personal Moment with Charles Krauthammer" Washington Monthly
• Charles Krauthammer at Discourse DB