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Charles Krauthammer

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Charles Krauthammer, (born 13 March 1950 in New York City[1][2]), is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist and commentator. Krauthammer appears regularly as a guest commentator on Fox News. His print work appears in the The Washington Post, Time Magazine, and The Weekly Standard.

Career

Krauthammer was born to Jewish parents of French citizenship.[3]

He was raised in Montreal, Canada 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.[4]

Continuing medical training during his rehabilitation, he earned an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1975, and then began working as a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

From 1975-1978, Krauthammer was a Resident and then a Chief Resident in Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital. During this time he and a colleague identified a form of mania (a part of bipolar disorder) which they named "secondary mania"[5] and published a second important paper.[6] The standard textbook for bipolar disease (“Manic Depressive Illness” by Goodwin and Jamison) contains nine citations of his work.

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 1981, Krauthammer began his journalistic career by joining The New Republic as a writer and editor. His New Republic writings won the 1984 National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism. In 1983, he began writing essays for Time magazine. In 1985, he began a weekly column for the Washington Post for which he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

In 2006, the Financial Times named Krauthammer the most influential commentator in America,[7] saying “Krauthammer has influenced US foreign policy for more than two decades. He coined and developed `The Reagan Doctrine’ in 1985 and he defined the US role as sole superpower in his essay, `The Unipolar Moment’, published shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Krauthammer’s 2004 speech `Democratic Realism’ set out a framework for tackling the post 9/11 world, focusing on the promotion of democracy in the Middle East.”

On the other hand, left-wing commentators have been quite hostile to Krauthammer. For example, in a 2006 column in The American Prospect criticizing The New Republic and other proponents of democratization in Arab countries, Matthew Yglesias wrote that "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."[8]

Opinions

Ideology

Krauthammer is generally considered a conservative or neoconservative. However, he is a supporter of legalized abortion[9][10][11], an opponent of the death penalty[12][13][14][15], a debunker of Intelligent Design and defender of evolution[16][17], a supporter of embryonic stem cell research (involving embryos discarded by fertility clinics)[18][19][20], a longtime advocate of radically higher energy taxes to induce conservation[21][22][23][24], and, in a written work of over a million words, has never once quoted Leo Strauss. The late Meg Greenfield, editorial page editor for The Washington Post who edited Krauthammer's columns for 15 years, called his weekly column "independent and hard to peg politically. It's a very tough column. There's no 'trendy' in it. You never know what is going to happen next."[25]

Foreign Policy and Interventionism

Cold War:

Krauthammer first gained attention in the mid-1980s with his naming of the Reagan Doctrine in a Time magazine essay.[26] It outlined a new American foreign policy of supporting anti-communist insurgencies around the globe (most notably Nicaragua, Angola, and Afghanistan) as a response to the Brezhnev Doctrine and as a way to go beyond containment of the Soviet Union to rollback of its recent acquisitions in the Third World.

In “The Poverty of Realism” (New Republic, February 17, 1986), he developed the underlying theory “that the end of American foreign policy is not just the security of the United States, but what John Kennedy called ‘the success of liberty.’ That means, first, defending the community of democratic nations (the repository of the liberal idea), and second, encouraging the establishment of new liberal polities at the frontier, most especially in the Third World.” The foreign policy, he argued, should be both “universal in aspiration,” and “prudent in application,” thus combining American idealism and realism. Over the next 20 years these ideas developed into what is now called "Democratic Realism.”

Post-Cold War:

In the lead article in Foreign Affairs entitled “The Unipolar Moment.”[27] Krauthammer coined the term “unipolarity” to describe the world structure that was emerging with the fall of the Soviet Union. Conventional wisdom of the late 1980s was that the bipolar world of the Cold War would give way to a multipolar world in which the US was one of many centers of power, co-equal to the European Union, Japan, China, and others. Krauthammer predicted that instead a unipolar world would emerge dominated by the United States with a power gap between the number one and number two power that would exceed any other in history. He also suggested that American hegemony would inevitably exist for only a historical "moment,” lasting at best for three or four decades.

Hegemony gave the United States the capacity and responsibility to act unilaterally if necessary, Krauthammer argued. Throughout the 90s, however, he was circumspect about how that power ought to be used. He split from his neoconservative colleagues who were arguing for an interventionist policy of “American greatness.” Krauthammer wrote that in the absence of a global existential threat the United States should stay out of "teacup wars” in failed states, and instead adopt a “dry powder” foreign policy of nonintervention and readiness.[28]

Krauthammer opposed purely “humanitarian intervention" (with the exception of overt genocide). While he supported the 1991 Gulf War on the grounds of both humanitarianism and strategic necessity (preventing Saddam Hussein from gaining control of the Persian Gulf and its resources), he opposed American intervention in the Balkan wars on the grounds that America should not be committing the lives of its soldiers to purely humanitarian missions in which there is no American national interest at stake.[29]

9/11, Iraq and the War on Terror:

He laid out the underlying principle of strategic necessity restraining democratic idealism in his controversial 2004 Kristol Award Lecture: “We will support democracy everywhere, but we will commit blood and treasure only in places where there is a strategic necessity—meaning, places central to the larger war against the existential enemy, the enemy that poses a global mortal threat to freedom.”[30]

The 9/11 attacks, Krauthammer wrote, made clear the new existential threat and the necessity for a new interventionism. On September 12, 2001 he wrote that, if the suspicion that al Qaeda was behind the attack proved correct, the United States had no choice but to go to war in Afghanistan.[31] He supported the Iraq war on the “realist" grounds of the strategic threat to Saddam regime posed to the region as UN sanctions were eroding and of his weapons of mass destruction; and on the "idealist" grounds that a self-sustaining democracy in Iraq would be a first step towards changing the poisonous political culture of tyranny, intolerance and religious fanaticism in the Arab world that had incubated the anti-American extremism from which 9/11 emerged.

On April 19th, 2002 Krauthammer insisted in his column:

Saddam survived, rearmed, defeated the inspections regime and is now back in the business of building weapons of mass destruction.[32]

In October 2002, he presented the arguments for and against war thus: “Hawks favor war on the grounds that Saddam Hussein is reckless, tyrannical and instinctively aggressive, and that if he comes into possession of nuclear weapons in addition to the weapons of mass destruction he already has, he is likely to use them or share them with terrorists. The threat of mass death on a scale never before seen residing in the hands of an unstable madman is intolerable -- and must be preempted.

“Doves oppose war on the grounds that the risks exceed the gains. War with Iraq could be very costly, possibly degenerating into urban warfare…. “I happen to believe that the preemption school is correct, that the risks of allowing Saddam Hussein to acquire his weapons will only grow with time. Nonetheless, I can both understand and respect those few Democrats who make the principled argument against war with Iraq on the grounds of deterrence, believing that safety lies in reliance on a proven (if perilous) balance of terror rather than the risky innovation of forcible disarmament by preemption."[33]

On the eve of the war, Krauthammer wrote that “reformation and reconstruction of an alien culture are a daunting task. Risky and, yes, arrogant.”[34] In February 2004, Krauthammer cautioned that "it may yet fail. But we cannot afford not to try. There is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the monster behind 9/11. It’s not Osama bin Laden; it is the cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world--oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism.”[35]

Following the war, Krauthammer asserted in 2003 that it was certain to provide vast benefits for the Iraqi people.

With its oil, its urbanized middle class, its educated population, its essential modernity, Iraq has a future. In two decades Saddam Hussein reduced its GDP by 75 percent. Once its political and industrial infrastructures are reestablished, Iraq's potential for rebound, indeed for explosive growth, is unlimited.[36]

Following the invasion, Krauthammer also declared it a resounding success:

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington." Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03

In a speech to the Foreign Policy Association in Philadelphia, he noted how the democratic tide in the Arab world had turned in early 2006 with a fierce counterattack by radical Islamist forces in Lebanon, Palestine and especially Iraq, where the Samarra bombing had led to a major intensification of sectarian warfare.[37] He continues to argue that despite the unexpected initial successes in Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent deterioration on both fronts, most particularly Iraq, the entire region is now in play and the outcome will depend on America’s ability to tolerate this long war.

President's Council on Bioethics

Appointed to President George W. Bush's President's Council on Bioethics in 2002, Krauthammer has opposed human experimentation, human cloning and euthanasia[38] but supports relaxing the Bush administration's limits on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.[39]

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,[40] yet many council members tend to agree with Krauthammer.

Religion

Krauthammer is a critic of “Intelligent Design”, and wrote several articles in 2005 likening it to “tarted-up creationism”.[41]

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”.[42] in 1985, and the Guardian of Zion Award of Bar-Ilan University in 2002.[43]

Miers nomination

Krauthammer 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”,[44] 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.

Israel

Krauthammer strongly opposed the Oslo accords, predicting that Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat would use the foothold it gave him in the West Bank and Gaza to continue the war against Israel that he had ostensibly renounced. These predictions were vindicated by the launching of the second intifada in 2000. In a July 2006 essay in Time, Krauthammer asserted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was fundamentally defined by the Palestinians' unwillingness to accept compromise.[45]

During the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006, Krauthammer wrote a column entitled "Let Israel Win the War" saying "What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?"[46] He later criticised Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's conduct, arging that he "has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later."[47]

Krauthammer supports a two-state solution to the conflict. Contrary to many conservatives, he supported Israel's Gaza withdrawal as a step towards rationalizing the frontiers between Israel and the future Palestinian state. He believes the importance of a security barrier between the two states' final borders will be an important element of any lasting peace.[48]

Torture

In an article appearing on 5 December 2005 in the Weekly Standard,[49] 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”) or if it is believed that torture can procure life-saving information in the case of a high-level terrorist deeply involved in the planning of future attacks.

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.[50] Other responses include Michael Kinsley in Slate Magazine[51] and the Wall Street Journal editorial.[52])

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”.[53]

Francis Fukuyama's 2006 book America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (ISBN 0-300-11399-4) criticizes Krauthammer, mentioning a February 2004 speech about the Iraq war which led Fukuyama to "resign from the neoconservative movement."[54] Krauthammer responded that "Fukuyama's claim that I attributed 'virtually unqualified success' to the war is a fabrication. [...] Far from calling it an unqualified success, virtual or otherwise, I said quite bluntly that 'it may be a bridge too far'."[55]



References

  1. ^ Washington Post Writers Group Biography, http://www.postwritersgroup.com/krauthammer.htm
  2. ^ Interview with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN, May 1, 2005, http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1021
  3. ^ Krauthammer, Charles (29 November 1999). "Not for Moi, Thanks". Jewish World Review. Retrieved 2007-02-05. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ Krauthammer, Charles (28 August 2000). "A Man for All Seasons". Jewish World Review. Retrieved 2007-02-05. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ C. Krauthammer and G. L. Klerman. "Secondary mania: manic syndromes associated with antecedent physical illness or drugs", Archives of General Psychiatry 1978; 35:1333-1339.
  6. ^ C. Krauthammer and G. L. Klerman. "The Epidemiology of Mania". In Manic Illness, edited by B. Shopsin, Raven Press, New York, 1979.
  7. ^ Barber, Lionel. "Views of the world Who is the most influential commentator in China? Or the most powerful voice in Iran? Or Britain? FT foreign correspondents gave us their picks, and came up with a revealing list that says as much about the world's political elites as the media that analyse them.", Financial Times, 20 May 2006
  8. ^ Arab Winter by Matthew Yglesias, The American Prospect, 21 November 2006
  9. ^ "Giuliani's Abortion 'Gaffe'" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post May 11, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/10/AR2007051001806.html
  10. ^ "Roe v. Roberts" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, September 16, 2005 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/15/AR2005091502141.html
  11. ^ "Federalism's New Friends" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, November 8, 1999 http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer110899.asp
  12. ^ "Silent Executions," by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post,June 14, 1985
  13. ^ “The Court is Just Doing its Job” by Charles Krauthamemr, Washington Post, June 30, 1989
  14. ^ “Without the Noose, Without the Gag” by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, April 24, 1992
  15. ^ “Sparing Moussaoui for the wrong reasons” by Charles Krauthammer Washington Post, May 12, 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/11/AR2006051101949.html
  16. ^ "Phony Theory, False Conflict” by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, November 18, 2005 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111701304.html
  17. ^ “Let's Have No More Monkey Trials” by Charles Krauthammer Time, Aug. 01, 2005 http://www.time.com/time/columnist/krauthammer/article/0,9565,1088869,00.html
  18. ^ “Stem Cell Miracle?” by Charles Krauthammer Washington Post, January 12, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011101571.html
  19. ^ “Cell Lines, Moral Lines” by Charles Krauthammer Washington Post, August 5, 2005 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080401825.html
  20. ^ “Research Cloning? No.” by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, May 10, 2002 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A63060-2002May9
  21. ^ “The Oil-Bust Panic” by Charles Krauthammer, The New Republic, Feb 21, 1983
  22. ^ “Pump Some Seriousness Into Energy Policy” by Charles Krauthammer Washington Post, November 11, 2005 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/10/AR2005111001502.html
  23. ^ “Energy Independence?” by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, January 26, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501547.html
  24. ^ “The Tax-Free Lunch” by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, June 29, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/28/AR2007062801793.html
  25. ^ [http://www.postwritersgroup.com/krauthammer.htm "Washington Post Writers Group Biography"
  26. ^ "The Reagan Doctrine", by Charles Krauthammer
  27. ^ The Unipolar Moment by Charles Krauthammer, Foreign Affairs, Winter 1990/1991
  28. ^ Democratic Realism by Charles Krauthammer, American Enterprise Institute, February 2004
  29. ^ The Path to Putin by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, April 3, 2000
  30. ^ Democratic Realism by Charles Krauthammer, American Enterprise Institute, February 2004
  31. ^ This Is Not a Crime, This is War by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, September 12, 2001
  32. ^ Krauthammer, Charles (22 April 2002). "We can't blow it again". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-05-06. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  33. ^ What Good Is Delay? by Charles Krauthammer, Jewish World Review, 7 October 2002
  34. ^ Coming Ashore by Charles Krauthammer, Time, February 17, 2003
  35. ^ Democratic Realism by Charles Krauthammer, American Enterprise Institute, February 2004
  36. ^ Krauthammer, Charles (19 September 2003). "Democrats and Nation-Building". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-07-20. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  37. ^ Past the Apogee by Charles Krauthammer, Foreign Policy Research Institute, December 2006
  38. ^ Krauthammer: “The Great Stem Cell Hoax” by Charles Krauthammer, Weekly Standard, 13 August 2001
  39. ^ “Cell Lines, Moral Lines; Research Should Expand — With a Key Limit” by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, Friday, 5 August 2005
  40. ^ “Bush's Advisers on Ethics Discuss Human Cloning” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times, 18 January 2002
  41. ^ “Phony Theory, False Conflict; ‘Intelligent Design’ Foolishly Pits Evolution Against Faith” by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 18 November 2005
  42. ^ “Charles Krauthammer to Receive 2004 Irving Kristol Award”, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1 October 2003
  43. ^ “Charles Krauthammer: A Pen in Defense of Zion” by Bret Stephens, Jerusalem Post, June 13, 2002
  44. ^ “Miers: The Only Exit Strategy” by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 12 October 2006
  45. ^ "Remember What Happened Here" by Charles Krauthammer, "Time Magazine", 5 July 2006
  46. ^ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/lost_moral_bearings.html
  47. ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301258.html
  48. ^ http://media.www.yucommentator.com/media/storage/paper652/news/2002/11/10/News/Yeshiva.Students.Attend.Wexner.Memorial.Lecture.Krauthammer.Draws.Tremendous.Cro-664160.shtml
  49. ^ “The Truth about Torture” by Charles Krauthammer, the Weekly Standard, 5 December 2005
  50. ^ "The Abolition of Torture" by Andrew Sullivan, The New Republic, 7 December 2005
  51. ^ “Torture for Dummies; Exploding the ‘ticking bomb’ argument” by Michael Kinsley, Slate, 13 December 2005
  52. ^ “Tortuous Progress”, Wall Street Journal, 13 December 2005
  53. ^ “The Neoconservative Convergence”, Charles Krauthammer, Commentary magazine, accessed 30 June 2006
  54. ^ “Neo-Con No More”, Paul Berman, New York Times, 26 March 2006, accessed 1 March 2007
  55. ^ Fukuyama's Fantasy, Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 28 March 2006, accessed 30 June 2006
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