sábado, 31 de julio de 2010

Cultura

Cultura: una urgencia nacional

Por: Francisco Miró Quesada C*
Viernes 30 de Julio del 2010

¡Por fin! El presidente de la República ha anunciado la creación del Ministerio de Cultura. Suponemos, con optimismo, que la reglamentación sea inmediata y que no duerma el sueño de los justos.

¿Por qué es necesario que el país tenga Ministerio de Cultura? Por la sencilla razón de que la cultura es la esencia misma de una nación. Es el crisol en que se fundan los rasgos característicos de un país.

La palabra "cultura" tiene un origen agrario. Proviene de "agricultura". O sea "cultura del agro". "Agro" en latín significa "campo". Y "cultura", según Cicerón, Varrón y otros autores latinos, quiere decir ocupación permanente. La agricultura supone el trabajo constante de la tierra. Solo con esta labor el campo producirá sus frutos.

En el ámbito humano, la cultura es lo creado por el trabajo incesante del hombre. Desde que el ser humano deja de ser cazador o recolector y comienza a arar la tierra empieza la cultura.

Poco a poco, a través de los siglos, van apareciendo los elementos que la integran. Es difícil saber cómo nacieron sus diversos aspectos. Probablemente fueron la danza y la música. Los estudios de antropología cultural muestran que las poblaciones primitivas siempre practicaban la danza y, naturalmente, la música, pues sin música no se puede danzar. Una música rudimentaria, por cierto, pero que por más rudimentaria que fuera ya era una manifestación cultural.

Otra manifestación es la poesía. Algunos instrumentos para acompañar la danza, como el tambor, también surgieron y algunas manifestaciones científicas, como la observación del cielo y de las estrellas para orientarse respecto de las estaciones del año. Hasta que surge la escritura y la evolución de la cultura se acelera.

En las diversas civilizaciones se crean sistemas diversos de escritura, desde los jeroglíficos egipcios hasta la maravillosa claridad del alfabeto latino.

La escritura fija el tiempo, transporta la fluidez en permanencia y entonces se pueden registrar los hechos. Se crean así los archivos, en los que se guarda celosamente el pasado, y es posible conocer la evolución de la cultura humana: el canto, la música, la poesía, el cuento, la novela. Nace la historia documentada, la filosofía, la evolución de los instrumentos musicales y todas estas creaciones van caracterizando el espíritu de las naciones.

¿Cómo debería funcionar el Ministerio de Cultura? De manera general, se puede decir que su función esencial es fomentar la cultura; que todas las artes y las letras sean incentivadas. Y para ello se necesita un presupuesto adecuado. De otro modo, muy poco se habrá logrado con su creación.

¿Cuáles serían las materias culturales que el ministerio debería incentivar? Empecemos por la música, quizá la creación artística más antigua de todas. Desde luego, la música clásica. Pero también la popular, porque en ella se manifiesta el alma del pueblo.

Otro problema es el de la ciencia, que es un componente fundamental de la cultura.

¿Mas qué tipos de ciencia? Además la tecnología debe ser incluida, pues sabemos hasta el cansancio que sin progreso tecnológico el país no puede aspirar a un desarrollo sostenido e inclusivo.

Planteados todos estos temas, debo abordar un problema de cuya solución dependerá del éxito o el fracaso del Ministerio de Cultura: ¿quién habrá de dirigirlo? Espero que su nombramiento no esté influido por la ambición política. Que el ministro o la ministra no pertenezcan al partido que está gobernando.

El nombramiento debe recaer en una persona independiente que no tenga nada que ver con la política, y que tenga una vasta cultura.

Hago votos para que la persona nombrada para dirigir el Ministerio de Cultura sea independiente. Si se cumple esta condición, la cultura en el Perú habrá de progresar esplendorosamente.

(*) Codirector general

viernes, 30 de julio de 2010

Lad metas madres

Las metas madre

Por: Jaime de Althaus Guarderas
Viernes 30 de Julio del 2010

La queja contra la lluvia de cifras en los mensajes presidenciales es engreída y premoderna. Una autoridad tiene que rendir cuentas, y eso significa hacerlo con cifras. Pero, claro, tienen que ser cifras inteligentes. Se ha beneficiado a 4 millones con agua potable, sí, pero no se dijo cuál es la meta, cuántos faltan, cuándo la tendrán todos. Eso es lo que interesa. De lo contrario, las cifras no significan nada, carecen de perspectiva y, por lo tanto, solo aturden. Lo que debe haber es un conjunto de metas, cuánto se ha avanzado y por qué, qué se hizo bien y qué no se hizo. Y organizar el discurso entero en función de eso.

Hay metas madre como la reducción del oprobio de la pobreza y de la desnutrición infantil. El gran avance de este gobierno es que ahora tenemos esas metas, y el gran avance del país es que podemos darnos el lujo de tenerlas, porque ahora crecemos de manera sostenida. En los setenta y ochenta solo incrementábamos la pobreza o la reducíamos ilusoria y transitoriamente; no podíamos siquiera fijarnos metas. Pero en los últimos 18 años la pobreza ha bajado de 57% en 1991 a 34% en el 2009. ¡Se ha reducido casi a la mitad! Esa es la gran noticia. Ahora la meta es reducirla a 30% en el 2011 y a 10% en el 2021. Parece un sueño para quienes vivimos las épocas en las que se debatía si el Perú era viable. Faltó precisar la nueva meta para la reducción de la desnutrición infantil.

Todas las acciones del Gobierno deberían evaluarse según la medida en que contribuyen a esas metas madre. Las políticas agrarias, por ejemplo, ¿han contribuido o no a reducir la pobreza y la desnutrición infantil? Me temo que no mucho. Si no contribuyen, deben discontinuarse o corregirse. Esa es la idea de las reformas, de la reforma permanente, un medio para avanzar más rápidamente. No es cierto que el Gobierno no esté llevando adelante reformas: en educación, por ejemplo, la carrera magisterial es una verdadera revolución, si se implementa bien: faltó discutir los problemas de su implementación.

En esa línea, qué importantes son las evaluaciones independientes que contrata el MEF, como la última sobre el Seguro Integral de Salud, que precisa los porcentajes de filtración y cómo se ha incrementado la cobertura de los más pobres pero cómo, sin embargo, el gasto tiende a desplazarse hacia los quintiles más ricos: en el discurso no se discutió esto y más bien se presentó como un avance la extensión del aseguramiento universal de los tres departamentos más pobres directamente a Lima, un salto de garrocha que solo servirá para concentrar aun más gasto en los quintiles más ricos. Pero el solo hecho de que estemos discutiendo estas cosas ya es un avance gigantesco. ¡Arriba Perú!


miércoles, 28 de julio de 2010

Colaborador Vallejo

Columnista invitado: César Vallejo, 1926

Promedio (6 votes)

Por Mirko Lauer

(Los investigadores Carlos Fernández y Valentino Gianuzzi nos alcanzan este texto casi desconocido, aparecido en la revista Par-Sud-Am el 30.7.1926. Ellos son autores de César Vallejo: textos rescatados, Lima, Universidad Ricardo Palma, 2009. El texto muestra que algunas cosas han cambiado mucho; otras, no tanto.)

El 28 de julio celebra el Perú el 105 aniversario de su independencia. Al cabo de un siglo de convulsiones políticas peculiares a una época de ensayo republicano, es grato constatar cómo este país ha empezado últimamente a encauzar su vida dentro de normas de paz y estabilidad de sus instituciones democráticas. Dotado de una nueva Constitución, cuyos fundamentos responden a sus nuevas necesidades sociales, el Perú ha entrado por fin en era de efectivo desarrollo nacional. Se diría que de un golpe, como lo hizo México, ha abandonado las agitaciones y guerras civiles, para entrar en un esfuerzo de creación verdaderamente nacional.

La importancia que el Perú tuvo en América durante la época precolombina y el coloniaje, ha decrecido en la época independiente.

Es uno de los países que mayores trastornos ha sufrido. Un destino de fragor e inquietud dolorosa ha ensangrentado los primeros gobiernos de la república. Sin embargo, ha habido paréntesis de paz constructiva, tales como el gobierno de Castilla y de Piérola, durante los cuales el Perú ha colocado las primeras bases de su provenir.

Libertado por San Martín y Bolívar, el Perú ha tenido grandes precursores de su independencia, salidos de su seno, tales como el inca Túpac Amaru, Zela y otros, que hicieron magníficas proezas de heroísmo por libertar al país de la dominación española. La nación conserva la herencia patriótica de esos héroes y, junto a las formas de Estado legadas por el pensamiento político de Bolívar, el Perú se esfuerza en ajustar los ideales de su vida al maravilloso ritmo de convivencia y justicia sociales de los Incas, que aquellos precursores, salidos del fondo de la raza indígena, trataron de mantener en el país.

En rigor, el Perú debe su libertad a la actuación militar de San Martín, quien año tras año y palmo a palmo fue combatiendo a las fuerzas españolas, hasta la ocupación de Lima, donde el 28 de julio de 1821 proclamara la independencia del Perú. La independencia peruana se debe, sin disputa, más a San Martín que a Bolívar. Así lo reconoce el general Mangin, quien refiriéndose al momento en que el capitán argentino va a ceder a Bolívar el comando general de las fuerzas revolucionarias en Sudamérica, dice: "El objeto de San Martín estaba golpeado ya de muerte". Bolívar no tuvo más que acabar la titánica obra que San Martín había iniciado y realizado en tantos años de paciente y aguerrido heroísmo. San Martín, pues, libertó al Perú; pero Bolívar inspiró todo el espíritu y toda la estructura política del Perú y de la América entera. Bolívar, más que como guerrero, brilla como "escultor de pueblos", es decir, como estadista. Hasta ahora mismo, las geniales orientaciones de su política no logran ser enteramente comprendidas y los pueblos de América saben que es en las doctrinas bolivarianas donde hay que buscar, en gran parte, el secreto de una paz armoniosa y fecunda en el continente.

Sellada la independencia del Perú, los esfuerzos de los primeros gobiernos se dirigieron, como es natural, a delinear los nuevos derroteros sociales del país. En esa tarea se sucedieron más de cincuenta años. Se dictan numerosas y efímeras constituciones y se ponen a prueba otras tantas fuerzas de gobierno, encarnadas en cien Presidentes y caudillos militares. En todos esos ensayos y guerras civiles, el país perdió tiempo y hermosas energías. Es a la mitad del siglo pasado que empiezan a delinearse las primeras raíces de una obra nacional de grandes trayectorias. Las agitaciones políticas se hacen entonces más doctrinarias y el pueblo empieza a controlar a sus caudillos. Es entonces que se da la Constitución de 1860, que ha regido hasta 1920, la misma que aun conteniendo importantes disposiciones jurídicas, adolecía en sus lineamientos generales de ese pensamiento abstracto y desconectado de la realidad, peculiar al romanticismo político de la época en que ella fue dictada. Es también entonces que empiezan a realizarse los primeros progresos en el terreno de las industrias y finanzas peruanas.

La situación de Perú va mejorando desde hace pocos años y su avance se ha centuplicado, desde todos las puntos de vista. Un vasto vuelo ha cobrado la educación pública. En 1925 funcionaron 4.000 escuelas fiscales elementales y 26 colegios de instrucción secundaria, los mismos que poseen un franco espíritu nacionalista e indígena. La enseñanza politécnica se da en todas las regiones industriales del país. En cuanto a la situación económica, el manifiesto publicado por el Gobierno últimamente establece un superávit de 700.000 libras. Las más recientes estadísticas del comercio internacional acusan la cifra de 18.929.418.990 libras de importaciones, por 25.114.377.000 de exportaciones. El presupuesto fiscal registra un egreso de 8.581.974.186 libras.

Todo en el Perú lleva al convencimiento de que este país alcanzará en breve un gran bienestar nacional y, por ende, un primer relieve internacional en el continente. Sus ingentes riquezas naturales hacen de él una síntesis suprema de todas las tierras y climas de la naturaleza. Los petróleos de Piura, el oro, plata y cobre de Cerro de Pasco y Pataz, el azúcar de Chicama, el algodón de Lambayeque, el caucho de Loreto, los inmensos valles del Amazonas plenos de exuberantes floras y de faunas variadísimas, las vastas planicies de los Andes, constituyen fuerzas suficientes para hacer del país que las posee, una grande y brillante nación. Al lado de estos recursos materiales, el Perú tiene la gloria de haber producido espíritus superiores, tales como los escritores González Prada, Ricardo Palma y Abraham Valdelomar, los hombres de ciencia Villarreal y Barranca, el artista Merino y ese gran aviador Jorge Chávez, que murió batiendo el récord mundial de altura en Domodosola.


La lucha contra la corrupcion

La insatisfecha sed social por decencia

Augusto Alvarez Rodrich
alvarezrodrich@larepublica.com.pe

Anticorrupción: algo en lo que, el Perú, no avanza.

En un día como hoy, en el que no van a escasear las expresiones de elogio al gobierno del presidente Alan García, varias muy justificadas y otras explicadas por el inagotable espíritu adulón de algunos entusiastas con el que esté de turno, quizá valga la pena hacer un esfuerzo de singularidad y plantear en qué no está avanzando el Perú.

Es claro que el Perú está –como dice la publicidad oficial– avanzando en varios rubros relevantes que están mejorando la perspectiva del país y la calidad de la vida de la gente.

La reducción de la pobreza experimentada en estos años y el ensanchamiento de la clase media, junto con la sólida confianza empresarial que se percibe en el momento actual y que se traduce en significativos flujos de inversión, son solo algunas expresiones de dicho avance. Seguramente, esta mañana nos vamos a empachar de cifras que lo fundamenten.

Sin embargo, no es frecuente que los jefes de estado realicen un esfuerzo de autocrítica sobre las áreas en las que el avance es insuficiente o inexistente, y aunque el ejercicio de recordarlas sea interpretado por algunos como mala leche, ganas de molestar o mezquindad con el gobierno, no cabe otra opción que hacerlo con el fin de no correr el riesgo de que el mandatario sienta que se acerca a la perfección.

En ese aspecto, un rubro en el que no se han producido avances y en el que, por el contrario, se observan retrocesos clamorosos, es el de la lucha contra la corrupción.

No es que estemos en el desmadre cleptocrático del fujimontesinismo, pero lo sucedido con la corrupción en este lustro político es lamentable especialmente por ocurrir con un partido que la vez pasada que estuvo en el poder salió muy manchado por la deshonestidad, y porque, después de lo ocurrido en los noventa, hay una sed social por decencia en el poder.

Pero en este quinquenio ha habido mucha corrupción y –peor aún– bastante impunidad pues, cuando los facinerosos eran amigos del gobierno, este maniobró para que nada les pase. Petroaudios, Cofopri, compras policiales o Comunicore son solo algunos escándalos que lo prueban. Este último caso está revelando ramificaciones increíbles que explican algunos respaldos que, parecen, son expresiones de complicidad.

Frente a ello, decir que "la corrupción le ha hecho mucho daño a mi gobierno", como sentenció el presidente García, es un reconocimiento ligero para un gobierno que no tuvo plan ni ganas de combatir a la corrupción, y que le dejará al país, junto con el valioso crecimiento económico y la reducción de pobreza, la sensación maloliente de que, en el Perú, casi siempre, al Estado se va a robar.

domingo, 25 de julio de 2010

Ojos Vendados - Andrés Oppenheimer



 

ANDRÉS OPPENHEIMER, el columnista de The Miami Herald y analista político de la CNN, ha sido co-ganador del Premio Pulitzer, ganador del Premio Ortega y Gasset y también del Maria Moors Cabot. Su nombre figura en el ranking de periodistas más influyentes de Estados Unidos que realiza la revista Forbes. Nacido en la Argentina, se inició en el periodismo en su país natal, hizo una maestría en periodismo en la Universidad de Columbia en 1978 y pasó a trabajar en The Associated Press en Nueva York ese mismo año. Desde 1983 escribe para The Miami Herald y su columna sindicada se edita semanalmente en más de cuarenta periódicos. Ha publicado varios best-sellers, entre ellos México: En la frontera del caos, Crónicas de héroes y bandidos y La hora final de Castro.
 
 
El autor pone su lupa sobre los escándalos de corrupción que involucraron a conocidas empresas multinacionales —como Citibank e IBM— y al gobierno de los Estados Unidos en casos que sacudieron a varios países latinoamericanos. ¿Qué ocurrió entre bambalinas dentro de estas corporaciones y cómo actuaron los encargados de investigarlas? Dando a conocer, por primera vez, memorandos internos, grabaciones telefónicas y cables diplomáticos de Estados Unidos sobre episodios que conmovieron a la Argentina, México, Colombia y otros países de la región, Oppenheimer expone una red de complicidades y negligencias que hasta ahora han dificultado una lucha efectiva contra la corrupción. Y lo hace de manera magistral: el ritmo y el suspenso en el armado de la trama nos hacen sospechar que si existiese la posibilidad de incluir un verdadero thriller de alto voltaje político y financiero dentro del género de la investigación periodística, sin duda
este lugar le estaría reservado a Ojos vendados.
 http://www.4shared.com/file/4E-APmCf/Oppenheimer_Andres_-_Ojos_Vend.html

[Se han eliminado los trozos de este mensaje que no contenían texto]

__._,_.___

Krauttammer


Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer (pronounced /ˈkraʊt.hæmər/; born March 13, 1950) is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist and political commentator. His weekly column appears in The Washington Post and is syndicated in more than 200 newspapers and media outlets.[1] He is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and The New Republic. He is a Fox News contributor, a regular panelist on Fox's evening news program Special Report with Bret Baier and a weekly panelist on Inside Washington.[2]

 Life and career

Krauthammer was born on March 13, 1950 in New York City.[3][4] He was raised in Montreal, Quebec, where he attended Herzliah High School and 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, where he attended Harvard Medical School. Suffering a paralyzing diving accident in his first year of medical school,[5] he was hospitalized for a year, during which time he continued his medical studies.[6] He graduated with his class, earning an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1975, and then began working as a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital. In October 1984, he became board certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.[7]

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 resulting from a concomitant medical illness, rather than a primary inherent disorder, which they named "secondary mania"[8] and published a second important paper on the epidemiology of manic illness.[9] The standard[citation needed] textbook for bipolar disease (Manic Depressive Illness by Goodwin and Jamison)[10] contains twelve references to his work.

In 1978, Krauthammer quit medical practice to direct planning in psychiatric research for the Jimmy Carter administration, and began contributing to The New Republic magazine. During the presidential campaign of 1980, Krauthammer served as a speech writer to Vice President Walter Mondale.

In January 1981, Krauthammer began his journalistic career, 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,[11] 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', which was delivered to the American Enterprise Institute when Krauthammer won the Irving Kristol Award, set out a framework for tackling the post 9/11 world, focusing on the promotion of democracy in the Middle East."

In 2009, Politico columnist Ben Smith wrote that Krauthammer had "emerged in the Age of Obama as a central conservative voice, the kind of leader of the opposition that economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman represented for the left during the Bush years: a coherent, sophisticated and implacable critic of the new president. " New York Times columnist David Brooks says that today "he's the most important conservative columnist."[12]

Apart from the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism, Krauthammer has received numerous other awards, including the People for the American Way's First Amendment Award, the Champion/Tuck Award for Economic Understanding, the first annual ($250,000) Bradley Prize, and the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism,[13] an annual award given by the Eric Breindel Foundation.

On July 6, 2009, former MSNBC television personality Dan Abrams launched a website service, Mediaite, reporting on media figures. The site ranks all print and online columnists in America by influence. Krauthammer ranks, as of March 27, 2010 at #7.[14]edit Opinions and ideas

Foreign policy and interventionis

 Cold War

Krauthammer first gained attention in the mid-1980s when he first used the phrase "Reagan Doctrine" in his Time magazine column.[15] The phrase was a reference to the 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 reflected a new U.S. foreign policy that went beyond containment of the Soviet Union to rollback of recent Soviet influence in the Third World. The policy, which was strongly supported by Heritage Foundation foreign policy analysts and other conservatives, was ultimately embraced by Reagan's senior national security and foreign policy officials. Krauthammer's description of it as the "Reagan Doctrine" has since endured.

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, titled "The Unipolar Moment"[16] 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 U.S. 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 most powerful state and the second-most powerful state 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.[17]

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.[18]

[edit] 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."[17]

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 in to war in Afghanistan.[19] He supported the Iraq war on the "realist" grounds of the strategic threat the 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.

In October 2002, he presented what he believed were the primary arguments for and against the war, writing, "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."[20]

On the eve of the invasion, Krauthammer wrote that "[r]eformation and reconstruction of an alien culture are a daunting task. Risky and, yes, arrogant."[21] In February 2003, 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."[17] Krauthammer in 2003 noted that the reconstruction of Iraq would provide many benefits for the Iraqi people, once the political and economic infrastructure destroyed by Saddam was restored: "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."[22]

In a speech to the Foreign Policy Association in Philadelphia, he argued that the "Arab Spring" that had brought the beginnings of democratization in the Arab world had been met in 2006 with a "fierce counterattack" by radical Islamist forces in Lebanon, Palestine and especially Iraq, which witnessed a major intensification in sectarian warfare.[23] In late 2006 and 2007, he was one of the few commentators to support the surge in Iraq.[24][25]

[edit] Ideology

Krauthammer is generally considered a conservative;[26] he has also been called a neoconservative.[27] However, on domestic issues, Krauthammer is a supporter of legalized abortion;[28][29][30] an opponent of the death penalty;[31][32][33][34] an intelligent design critic and an advocate for the scientific consensus on evolution, calling the religion-science controversy a "false conflict;"[35][36] a supporter of embryonic stem cell research using embryos discarded by fertility clinics with restrictions in its applications;[37][38][39] and a longtime advocate of radically higher energy taxes to induce conservation.[40][41][42][43] 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."[3]

Hendrik Hertzberg, a former colleague of Krauthammer's at The New Republic during the 1980s, said that when the two first met in 1978, Krauthammer was "70 per cent Mondale liberal, 30 per cent 'Scoop Jackson Democrat,' that is, hard-line on Israel and relations with the Soviet Union;" while in the mid-80s, he was still "50-50: fairly liberal on economic and social questions but a full-bore foreign-policy neoconservative." Herzberg now calls Krauthammer a "pretty solid 90-10 Republican."[44]

Krauthammer's major monograph on foreign policy, "Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World,"[17] is critical both of the neoconservative Bush doctrine for being too expansive and utopian, and of foreign policy "realism" for being too narrow and immoral; instead, he proposes an alternative he calls "Democratic Realism." In a 2005 speech (later published in Commentary Magazine) he called neoconservatism "a governing ideology whose time has come." He noted that 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." In "Charlie Gibson's Gaffe" in The Washington Post, September 13, 2008, Krauthammer elaborated on the changing meanings of the Bush Doctrine in light of Gibson's controversial questioning of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin regarding what exactly the Bush Doctrine was, as if there was a single definition. Palin was criticized for her response. Krauthammer states in the article that "The Bush Doctrine" has had "four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of" the Bush Administration. Krauthammer states that the phrase "Bush Doctrine" originally referred to "the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration." He states that "There is no single meaning of the Bush Doctrine. He also states "the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world."[45]

[edit] Religion

Charles Krauthammer describes himself as Jewish but "not religious." In a Jerusalem Post interview he reflected, "Rabbi David Hartman, who runs the Hartman Institute [in Jerusalem], was actually at McGill the years I was a student there, and I took his courses on Maimonides. That had a big influence on me in the sense that I was going away from my Jewish upbringing, thinking of it as narrow and parochial, and when I was introduced to Maimonides, it was just sort of at the highest level of world philosophy, Aristotelian philosophy applied to Judaism. I realized that Jewish culture was not just a Sunday afternoon lecture. It belonged with a great secular culture that I admired as a student. So that kind of reinforced my Jewishness even as I became irreligious."[46]

Krauthammer is a critic of intelligent design, and wrote several articles in 2005 likening it to "tarted-up creationism."[47]

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"[48] in 1985, and the Guardian of Zion Award of Bar-Ilan University in 2002.[49]

[edit] Medicine

[edit] President's Council on Bioethics

Krauthammer was appointed to President George W. Bush's President's Council on Bioethics in 2002. He supported relaxing the Bush administration's limits on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.[50] But he has opposed human experimentation, human cloning and euthanasia.[51] He has warned that scientists were beginning to develop the power of "creating a class of superhumans." 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.[52] In March 2009, he was invited to the signing of the executive order by President Obama at the White House but declined to attend due to the "door being left open" as to the cloning of human embryos and the creation of normal human embryos solely for purposes of research. He also contrasted the "moral seriousness" of Bush's stem cell address of August 9, 2001 with that of Obama's address on stem cells.[53]

[edit] End of life care

Krauthammer is critical of the idea of living wills and the current state of end of life counseling in the U.S. He has written:

When my father was dying, my mother and brother and I had to decide how much treatment to pursue. What was a better way to ascertain my father's wishes: What he checked off on a form one fine summer's day years before being stricken; or what we, who had known him intimately for decades, thought he would want? The answer is obvious.[54]

[edit] 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 October 21, 2005, Charles Krauthammer published "Miers: The Only Exit Strategy,"[55] in which he explained that all of Miers' relevant constitutional writings are protected by both attorney-client privilege and executive privilege. This presented a unique face-saving solution to the mistake: "Miers withdraws out of respect for both the Senate and the executive's prerogatives".[56] Six days later Miers withdrew, employing that argument. She stated her respect for "the strength and independence of our three branches of government" and noted that the "protection of the prerogatives of the Executive Branch and continued pursuit of my confirmation are in tension." Therefore, "I have decided that seeking my confirmation should yield."[57]

The same day, NPR noted that "Krauthammer's scenario played out almost exactly as he wrote."[58] Columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that the White House was following Krauthammer's strategy "almost to the letter."[59] And a few weeks later, the New York Times reported that Krauthammer's "exit strategy" was "exactly what happened" and that he "has subsequently gotten credit for giving [the Bush administration] a plan."[60]

[edit] 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 which he had ostensibly renounced in the Israel-PLO Letters of Recognition. In a July 2006 essay in Time, Krauthammer asserted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was fundamentally defined by the Palestinians' unwillingness to accept compromise.[61]

During the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006, Krauthammer wrote a column, "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?"[62] He later criticized the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's conduct, arguing 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."[63]

Krauthammer supports a two-state solution to the conflict. Contrary to many conservatives, he supported Israel's Gaza withdrawal as a step toward rationalizing the frontiers between Israel and a 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.[64]

[ Torture

In a December 5, 2005 column in the Weekly Standard,[65] Krauthammer argued that any ban of torture must entail at least two exceptions. He claimed 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, it should be allowed. He has repeated these assertions in The Washington Post and other publications where his work is syndicated.[66]

[References

This article uses bare URLs in its references. Please use proper citations containing each referenced work's title, author, date, and source, so that the article remains verifiable in the future. Help may be available. Several templates are available for formatting. (March 2010)

  1. ^ The Harry Walker Agency, Inc.
  2. ^ Inside Washington.
  3. ^ a b Biography of Charles Krauthammer from The Washington Post Writers Group http://www.postwritersgroup.com/krauthammer.htm
  4. ^ Interview with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN, 1 May 2005, http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1021
  5. ^ Krauthammer, Charles (17 Aug 1984). "Don't Call It Courage". The Washington Post. 
  6. ^ "Pres. Bush was right all along: Disabled Dr. Charles Krauthammer on Stem Cell Research « Flaggman's Canada". Flaggman.wordpress.com. http://flaggman.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/krauthammer-and-goldberg-on-stem-cell-research/. Retrieved 2010-03-10. 
  7. ^ Wood, Tom (21 Nov 2008). "The College Backgrounds of America's Leading Newspaper Opinion Columnists". National Association of Scholars website. http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doctype_code=Article&doc_id=429. 
  8. ^ 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.
  9. ^ C. Krauthammer and G. L. Klerman. "The Epidemiology of Mania". In Manic Illness, edited by B. Shopsin, Raven Press, New York, 1979.
  10. ^ Goodwin, Frederick K., and Kay R. Jamison. Manic-Depressive Illness. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.
  11. ^ 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, May 20, 2006.
  12. ^ "Barack Obama's biggest critic: Charles Krauthammer". Politico.Com. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22743.html. Retrieved 2010-03-10. 
  13. ^ "The Washington Post Writers Group". Postwritersgroup.com. 2005-03-24. http://www.postwritersgroup.com/krauthammer.htm. Retrieved 2010-03-10. 
  14. ^ "Charles Krauthammer". Mediaite. http://www.mediaite.com/power-grid/person/?q=Charles+Krauthammer. Retrieved August 2, 2009. 
  15. ^ The Reagan Doctrine by Charles Krauthammer, Time magazine, April 1, 1985.
  16. ^ The Unipolar Moment by Charles Krauthammer, Foreign Affairs, Winter 1990/1991.
  17. ^ a b c d Democratic Realism by Charles Krauthammer, American Enterprise Institute, February 2004.
  18. ^ The Path to Putin by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, April 3, 2000.
  19. ^ This Is Not a Crime, This is War by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, September 12, 2001.
  20. ^ What Good Is Delay? by Charles Krauthammer, Jewish World Review, 7 October 2002.
  21. ^ Krauthammer, Charles (2003-02-17). "Coming Ashore". Time 161 (7): p. 37. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1004236-1,00.html. Retrieved 2009-09-06. 
  22. ^ Krauthammer, Charles (September 19, 2003). "Democrats and Nation-Building". The Washington Post. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2003/09/19/democrats_and_nation_building. Retrieved 2007-07-20. 
  23. ^ Past the Apogee by Charles Krauthammer, Foreign Policy Research Institute, December 2006.
  24. ^ "In Baker's Blunder, a Chance for Bush" by Charles Krauthammer Washington Post, December 5, 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/14/AR2006121401367.html
  25. ^ "The Surge: First Fruits" by Charles Krauthammer Washington Post, April 13, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/12/AR2007041201823.html
  26. ^ Beinart, Peter (2006-04-30). "The Rehabilitation of the Cold-War Liberal". New York TImes. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/magazine/30liberal.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print. Retrieved 2008-08-31. 
  27. ^ Bill, Steigerwald (2004-05-29). "So, what is a 'neocon'?". Pittsburgh Tribune. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_196286.html. Retrieved 2009-04-08. 
  28. ^ "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
  29. ^ "Roe v. Roberts" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, September 16, 2005 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/15/AR2005091502141.html
  30. ^ "Federalism's New Friends" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, November 8, 1999 http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer110899.asp
  31. ^ "Silent Executions," by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, June 14, 1985.
  32. ^ "The Court is Just Doing its Job" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, June 30, 1989.
  33. ^ "Without the Noose, Without the Gag" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, April 24, 1992.
  34. ^ "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
  35. ^ "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
  36. ^ Krauthammer, Charles (2005-08-08). "Let's Have No More Monkey Trials". Time 166 (6): p. 78. http://www.time.com/time/columnist/krauthammer/article/0,9565,1088869,00.html. Retrieved 2009-09-06. 
  37. ^ "Stem Cell Miracle?" by Charles Krauthammer Washington Post, January 12, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011101571.html
  38. ^ "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
  39. ^ "Research Cloning? No." by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, May 10, 2002 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A63060-2002May9
  40. ^ "The Oil-Bust Panic" by Charles Krauthammer, The New Republic, February 21, 1983.
  41. ^ "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
  42. ^ "Energy Independence?" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, January 26, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501547.html
  43. ^ "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
  44. ^ Herzberg, Hendrik (2 March 2009). "Krauthammer Then and Now". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2009/03/krauthammer-the.html. Retrieved 18 March 2009. 
  45. ^ "Charlie Gibson's Gaffe" By Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, September 13, 2008 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091202457.html
  46. ^ "The unfashionable Charles Krauthammer". The Jerusalem Post. June 10, 2009. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371064529&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull. Retrieved October 11, 2009. 
  47. ^ "Phony Theory, False Conflict; 'Intelligent Design' Foolishly Pits Evolution Against Faith" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, November 18, 2005.
  48. ^ "Charles Krauthammer to Receive 2004 Irving Kristol Award", American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1 October 2003.
  49. ^ "Charles Krauthammer: A Pen in Defense of Zion" by Bret Stephens, Jerusalem Post, June 13, 2002.
  50. ^ "Cell Lines, Moral Lines; Research Should Expand — With a Key Limit" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, Friday, 5 August 2005.
  51. ^ Krauthammer: "The Great Stem Cell Hoax" by Charles Krauthammer, Weekly Standard, 13 August 2001.
  52. ^ "Bush's Advisers on Ethics Discuss Human Cloning" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times, 18 January 2002.
  53. ^ "Obama's 'Science' Fiction" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, March 13, 2009.
  54. ^ Krauthammer, Charles (August 21, 2009). "The Truth About Death Counseling". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/20/AR2009082003035.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns. Retrieved August 21, 2009. 
  55. ^ "Miers: The Only Exit Strategy" by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 12 October 2006.
  56. ^ "Commentary - An Exit Strategy for the Miers Debacle by Charles Krauthammer". RealClearPolitics. 2005-10-21. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-10_21_05_CK.html. Retrieved 2010-03-10. 
  57. ^ "Text of Miers's Letter to President Bush" White House.
  58. ^ "Conservative Columnist's Miers Plan Played Out" NPR.
  59. ^ "Conservatives Will Regret the Miers Withdrawal" E.J. Dionne.
  60. ^ "He Says Yes to Legalized Torture" New York Times.
  61. ^ Krauthammer, Charles (2006-07-10). "Remember What Happened Here". Time 168 (2): p. 76. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1209965,00.html. Retrieved 2009-09-06. 
  62. ^ "Let Israel Win the War" by Charles Krauthammer, www.realclearpolitics.com, July 28, 2006.
  63. ^ Krauthammer, Charles (August 4, 2006). "Israel's Lost Moment". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301258.html. Retrieved April 28, 2010. 
  64. ^ Yeshiva Students Attend Wexner Memorial Lecture Krauthammer Draws Tremendous Crowd.
  65. ^ "The Truth about Torture" by Charles Krauthammer, the Weekly Standard, December 5, 2005.
  66. ^ "The Use of Torture" by Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post, May 1, 2009.

[

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Charles Krauthammer