Look up drone in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Drone may refer to:

Nature[link]

• Drone (bee)
• Male wasp
• Male ant

Chemicals[link]

An abbreviation referring to one of two psychoactive drugs:

• Mephedrone
• 4-Methoxymethcathinone, commonly known as methedrone

Vehicles[link]

• Robot in general
  • Remotely operated underwater vehicle
  • Target drone
  • Unmanned aerial vehicle
  • Unmanned ground vehicle

Literature[link]

• Drone, a member of the Drones Club in P. G. Wodehouse's novels
• The Culture § Drones, intelligent machines

Motion picture and video games[link]

• "Drone" (Voyager episode), an episode of Star Trek: Voyager
• Covenant (Halo) § Drones (Yanme'e) in the Halo series
• Drone Weapon, in the Stargate universe
• Drone, a humanoid assimilated by the Borg (Star Trek)
• Drones, three robotic helpers in Silent Running

Music[link]

• Drone (music), a continuous note or chord, or the part of various musical instruments that produces such a sound
• Drone music, a musical style
• The Drones, an Australian band
• The Drones (British band)
• Drone Records, a record label
• Bumbass, sometimes called a drone

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

The Drones
Gareth Liddiard
Background information
Origin	Perth, Western Australia (early years) Melbourne, Victoria
Genres	Alternative rock, punk blues, garage rock
Years active	2000–present
Labels	ATP Recordings In-Fidelity Records Bang! Records Spooky Records
Website	The Drones official website
Members
Gareth Liddiard Fiona Kitschin Dan Luscombe Mike Noga
Past members
Warren Hall James McCann Steve Joines Brendan Humphries Rui Pereira Christian Strybosch

The Drones are an Australian rock group who rose to prominence during the early 2000s. They are influenced by a variety of bands and soloists including Neil Young, The Velvet Underground, Bad Brains, Suicide, Green on Red, The Birthday Party, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Nina Simone.^{[citation needed]}

The Sound[link]

Musically the band does not fit easily into conventional rock music categories.^{[citation needed]} While some of their material is based on conventional rock sounds and song structures, they also venture into the noisy, atonal, blues-based music that Tom Waits brought to a wider audience. The Drones also explore the music of the Australia bush made popular in Australia by Weddings Parties Anything. The Drones left Australia in 2005 to concentrate on the European market, where a larger market would make it easier to support their unconventional sound.^{[citation needed]} However, they eventually returned to Australia to find a groundswell of interest in them—generated by acclaim and publicity both at home and abroad. Lead singer Gareth Liddiard is known for his thick Australian accent and political lyrics.^{[citation needed]}

Biography[link]

Early history (1998–2003)[link]

The first incarnation of The Drones formed in Perth in 1998 and included a varied line up over the next few years. The mainstays of the band, Rui Pereira and Gareth Liddiard, had previously played together in the 'Gutterville Splendour Six', with musicians in the original Perth incarnations including Warren Hall (Moth, Gutterville Splendour Six) on drums and guitarist James McCann (Harpoon, Nunchukka Superfly, Lowdorados, Gutterville Six).^[1] Steve Joines (The Kill Devil Hills, Gutterville) replaced McCann when McCann relocated to Sydney. In early 2000, Liddiard and Pereira headed to the east coast to accelerate their progress. Initially they met with little success and endured tough conditions including an extended stay in a decrepit Victorian caravan park,^[2] and sleeping on an old mattress found on the roadside. Guitarist Brendan Humphries (Sweeney Todd and His Elephant Men, Gutterville Splendour Six, The Kill Devil Hills) was included among the first of the Melbourne lineups, and later Fiona Kitschin (also from Perth) was recruited on bass. Christian Strybosch (Stunt Car Drivers) replaced Hall on drums, Humphries returned to Perth, and the lineup of Liddiard, Pereira, Kitschin and Strybosch went on to record in one day an EP. The ‘self-titled' EP was released in mid 2001 and instantly found The Drones receiving air-play on public radio, and a considerable amount of coverage in the street press. Voted as the “best new local talent” in 2001 by Patrick Donovan, music editor for The Age newspaper.^{[citation needed]} Sophie Best, a respected freelance journo for Beat Magazine, The Age and her own webzine Back Porch by the end of that year was talking up “The Drones” and they made her top ten as well.^[3]

The band then signed to Spooky Records, releasing their debut album, Here Come The Lies in August 2002.^[4] Two further 7" singles, "The Cockeyed Lowlife of the Highlands" and "Bird in a Church", were released in 2002.

Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By/Gala Mill (2004–2007)[link]

Sessions for what would become their second album Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By were undertaken during 2004. But once the album was completed, the band had legal problems that stalled the release for over a year.^{[citation needed]} Influential Melbourne indie music figure Bruce Milne's In-Fidelity label eventually released it in early 2005,^[2] to enthusiastic reviews from the underground music press. The album was also nominated for Triple J's inaugural J Award prize in 2005^{[citation needed]} (which was eventually won by Wolfmother), and topped many Australian critics' end-of-year Top 10 lists.^{[citation needed]} Furthermore, Triple J put the album tracks "Shark Fin Blues" and "Baby²" on medium rotation.^{[citation needed]} During an extensive six month tour encompassing Europe and the US, All Tomorrow's Parties issued Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By outside of Australia towards the end of 2005. Strybosch left around this time to join Dan Kelly and the Alpha Males, and Mike Noga (Sandro) took his place.^[2]

In 2006, a record of outtakes from Here Come the Lies and Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By called The Miller's Daughter was released by Bang! Records (a Spanish label which has many other underground Australian bands on its roster). Later that April, up against other notable bands such as Wolfmother, The Go-Betweens, TZU, The Devastations, The Mess Hall, Tex, Don & Charlie and Ben Lee, Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By won the inaugural Australian Music Prize. The Drones continued to tour throughout the year, including a support slot on You Am I's Australian tour in July.

In September 2009 Wait Long... was performed live in its entirety as part of the All Tomorrow's Parties-curated Don't Look Back series.

In a poll of contemporary Australian songwriters organised by Triple J, "Shark Fin Blues", was voted by as the greatest Australian song.^[5]

The Drones third studio album Gala Mill was recorded in an old mill at Gala Farm in Cranbrook, Tasmania. It was released in September 2006. The album was also nominated for the 2006 Australian Music Prize.^{[citation needed]} The Drones were also nominated as 'Most Outstanding New Independent Artist' at the 2006 inaugural AIR (Australian Independent Record Labels Association) Chart Awards.^[6]

In late 2006, Liddiard announced that Rui Pereira had left the band, to be replaced by Dan Luscombe^[7] (The Blackeyed Susans, Dan Kelly and the Alpha Males, Stardust Five). Luscombe debuted for The Drones at the 2006 Meredith Music Festival.

On 15 November 2006 The Drones, through the American label, Spaceland Recordings, released a live album recorded at Spaceland an alternative rock/indie rock nightclub in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

In 2007 The Drones toured with the Big Day Out before undertaking a four month tour around Europe (with shows in Norway, France and Italy), commencing in April with a performance at the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival in the UK, curated by The Dirty Three. The band's European tour was followed by a national tour of Australia, with Snowman. 2007 also saw the release of the band's first DVD, Live in Madrid, a live performance by the band at the Gruta 77 club in Madrid.

The Minotaur and Havilah (2008–present)[link]

In July 2008 The Drones released a digital/12" EP featuring new songs "The Minotaur" and "Nail It Down", the first songs from their next album, Havilah. Havilah was released 20 September 2008 in Australia, with a worldwide release following in February 2009. The band undertook a national tour to promote the album in November, performed at the Falls Festival in December and toured Australia in February 2009 as part of the St Jerome's Laneway Festival.

More European and American dates are confirmed for 2009 including a performance at the All Tomorrow's Parties New York Festival in September.

At the fourth annual AIR Awards held on 22 November 2009 The Drones won two awards, 'Best Independent Album of the Year' for Havilah and 'Independent Artist of the Year'.^[8][9]

At the inaugural Australian Rolling Stone Awards, held in Sydney in January 2010, The Drones won the 'Best Live Act' award.^[10]

Current members[link]

• Gareth Liddiard - vocals, guitar
• Fiona Kitschin - bass
• Dan Luscombe - guitar
• Michael Noga - drums

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Here Come the Lies - Spooky Records (August 2002)
• Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By - In-Fidelity/ATP Recordings (April 2005)
• The Miller's Daughter - Bang! Records (2005)
• Gala Mill - ATP Recordings (September 2006) (No.66 AUS)
• Live in Spaceland - Spaceland Recordings (February 2007)
• Live at the Annandale Hotel 18th, 19 October 2007 (2008)
• Havilah - ATP Recordings (September 2008)

Miscellaneous[link]

• Self-titled Demo - Independent (limited run of 500) (2001)
• "Cockeyed Lowlife of the Highlands"/"Mean Streak" - Sonico Records 7" Single (2002)
• "Bird in a Church"/"Slamming on the Brakes" - In-Fidelity Records 7" Single (2002)
• "Shark Fin Blues"/"You Really Don't Care" - ATP Recordings/In-Fidelity Records 7" Single (2005)
• Custom Made - ATP Recordings 7" single (four songs) (28 October 2007)
• Live in Madrid - Munster Records DVD (2007)
• The Minotaur EP - ATP Recordings 12"/Digital (six songs) (July 2008)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official site
• In-Fidelity Bio
• The Drones on Myspace
• The Drones discography at MusicBrainz
• ATP Recordings page
• Interview with The Drones @ MessandNoise.com
• band page on Spaceland Recordings website
• Gareth Liddiard interview in Reverb Magazine (November 2010)

This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (December 2010)

Charles Krauthammer (pronounced /ˈkraʊt.hæmər/; born March 13, 1950) is an American Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist, political commentator, and physician. His column is syndicated to more than 275 newspapers and media outlets.^[1] He is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and The New Republic. He is also a weekly panelist on the PBS news program Inside Washington^[2] and a nightly panelist on Fox News's Special Report with Bret Baier.

Life and career[link]

Krauthammer was born on March 13, 1950, in New York City.^[3][4] He was raised in Montreal, Quebec, where he attended McGill University and obtained an honors degree in political science and economics in 1970. He was a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford, 1970–1971. He later moved back to the United States, where he attended Harvard Medical School. Suffering a paralyzing accident in his first year of medical school,^[4][5] he was hospitalized for a year, during which time he continued his medical studies. He graduated with his class, earning a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School in 1975, and went on to complete a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1984 he became board certified in Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology^[6]

From 1975 to 1978, Krauthammer was a resident and then a chief resident in Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Whilst chief resident, he co-discovered a form of mania resulting from a concomitant medical illness, rather than a primary inherent disorder, which he named "secondary mania"^[7] and co-authored an important chapter (with Gerald Klerman) on the epidemiology of manic illness for the first worldwide textbook of Manic Illness edited by Baron Shopsin.^[8] Frequent reference to his work appears throughout the 2007 textbook Manic-Depressive Illness, edited by Fred Goodwin and Kay Jamison, a standard reference for bipolar disorder.^[9]

In 1978, Krauthammer came to Washington, D.C. to direct planning in psychiatric research under the Carter administration.^{[citation needed]} He began contributing articles about politics to The New Republic and in 1980 served as a speech writer to Vice President Walter Mondale.^{[citation needed]} In January 1981, Krauthammer joined The New Republic as both a writer and editor.^{[citation needed]} In 1984, his New Republic essays won the "National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism".^{[citation needed]} In 1983, he began writing essays for Time magazine, one of which first brought him national acclaim for his development of the "Reagan Doctrine"...a term that endures to date (see below herein under "Cold War").^{[citation needed]} In 1985, he began a weekly column for The Washington Post, which in 1987 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.^{[citation needed]} In 1990, he became a panelist for the weekly PBS political roundtable, Inside Washington.^{[citation needed]} For the last decade, he has been a political analyst/commentator for Fox News.^{[citation needed]}

In 2006, the Financial Times named Krauthammer the most influential commentator in America,^[10] 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," a "kind of leader of the opposition...a coherent, sophisticated and implacable critic of the new president." The New York Times columnist David Brooks says that today "he's the most important conservative columnist."^[11] Former congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called Krauthammer "without a doubt the most powerful force in American conservatism. He has [been] for two, three, four years."^[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.

Former president Bill Clinton called Krauthammer "a brilliant man" in a December 2010 press conference.^[14] Krauthammer responded, tongue-in-cheek, that "my career is done" and "I'm toast".^[15]

Krauthammer is a member of the Chess Journalists of America^[16] and the Council on Foreign Relations.^[17] He is co-founder of Pro Musica Hebraica, a not-for-profit organization devoted to presenting Jewish classical music – much of it lost or forgotten – in a concert hall setting.^[18]

Opinions and ideas[link]

Foreign policy and interventionism[link]

Cold War[link]

Krauthammer first gained attention in the mid-1980s when he first used the phrase "Reagan Doctrine" in his Time magazine column.^[19] The phrase was a reference to the 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 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 policies 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[link]

In the lead article in Foreign Affairs, titled "The Unipolar Moment"^[20] 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 1990s, 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.^[21]

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.^[22]

9/11, Iraq and the War on Terror[link]

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."^[21]

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.^[23] 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 alleged 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."^[24]

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."^[25] 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."^[21] 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."^[26]

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.^[27] In late 2006 and 2007, he was one of the few commentators to support the surge in Iraq.^[28][29]

Ideology[link]

Within the American political spectrum, Krauthammer has been called a conservative.^[30][31] However, on domestic issues, Krauthammer is a supporter of legalized abortion;^[32][33][34] an opponent of the death penalty;^{[35][36][37][38]} an intelligent design critic and an advocate for the scientific consensus on evolution, calling the religion-science controversy a "false conflict;"^[39][40] a supporter of embryonic stem cell research using embryos discarded by fertility clinics with restrictions in its applications;^[41][42][43] and a longtime advocate of radically higher energy taxes to induce conservation.^{[44][45][46][47]} 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-1980s, he was still "50-50: fairly liberal on economic and social questions but a full-bore foreign-policy neoconservative." Hertzberg now calls Krauthammer a "pretty solid 90-10 Republican."^[48]

Krauthammer's major monograph on foreign policy, "Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World,"^[21] 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."^[49]

Religion[link]

Krauthammer is Jewish but "not religious." In a Jerusalem Post interview he reflected on how he had been influenced by his study of Maimonides at McGill with Rabbi David Hartman, head of Jerusalem's Hartman Institute and professor of philosophy at McGill during Krauthammer's student days, to see the grandeur of Jewish culture.^[50]

Krauthammer is a critic of intelligent design, and wrote several articles in 2005 likening it to "tarted-up creationism."^[51]

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"^[52] in 1985, and the Guardian of Zion Award of Bar-Ilan University in 2002.^[53]

Krauthammer opposed the Park51 Islamic community center project in Manhattan for “reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz - and no mosque at Ground Zero. Build it anywhere but there.” ^[54]

Medicine[link]

President's Council on Bioethics[link]

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.^[55] But he has opposed human experimentation, human cloning and euthanasia.^[56] 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.^[57] 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.^[58]

End of life care[link]

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.^[59]

Miers nomination[link]

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,"^[60] 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".^[61] 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."^[62]

The same day, NPR noted that "Krauthammer's scenario played out almost exactly as he wrote."^[63] Columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that the White House was following Krauthammer’s strategy "almost to the letter."^[64] 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."^[65]

Israel[link]

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.^[66]

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?"^[67] 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."^[68]

Krauthammer supports a two-state solution to the conflict. Unlike many conservatives, he supported Israel's Gaza withdrawal as a step toward rationalizing the frontiers between Israel and a future Palestinian state. He believes a security barrier between the two states' final borders will be an important element of any lasting peace.^[69]

When Richard Goldstone retracted the claim in the U.N. report on the 2008 Gaza war that that Israel intentionally killed Palestinian civilians,^[70] including children, Krauthammer strongly criticized Goldstone, saying that "this weasel-y excuse-laden retraction is too little and too late" and "the original report [was a] blood libel ranking with the libels of the 19th century in which Jews were accused of ritually slaughtering children ... [Goldstone] should spend the rest of his life undoing the damage".^[71]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Krauthammer's Weekly Column in The Washington Post
• Krauthammer Archives at Jewish World Review
• Krauthammer's biography at The Washington Post Writers Group website
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Krauthammer, May 1, 2005