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He Says Yes to Legalized Torture

ANNE E. KORNBLUT
New York Times
Sunday Dec. 11, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/we...1kornblut.html



Katie Falkenberg for The New York Times

In the Fray Charles Krauthammer, conservative conundrum.


WASHINGTON -- AS the debate over torture intensified earlier this month, Charles Krauthammer hit a nerve.

In a Dec. 5 cover essay in The Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine, Mr. Krauthammer argued that torture is not only defensible in certain very limited circumstances, but in fact morally necessary - if, for instance, it would save thousands of civilians by squeezing information about an imminent attack from a captured terrorist.

He was not the first to say so, but in his 4,000-word polemic, Mr. Krauthammer crystallized the case for keeping torture legal in a way that the Bush administration had not, ridiculing the "moral preening" of his critics and taking apart an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, point by point, while assailing the administration at the same time.

"Once you have gone public with a blanket ban on all forms of coercion, it is going to be very difficult to publicly carve out exceptions," Mr. Krauthammer wrote. "The Bush administration is to be faulted for having attempted such a codification with the kind of secrecy, lack of coherence, and lack of strict enforcement that led us to the McCain reaction."

In this debate as in so many others, Mr. Krauthammer found himself at the nexus of debate among conservatives; he has, after decades as a public intellectual, weighed in on almost every important issue at some point along the way, including stem cell research, the Iraq war and the debate over creationism and intelligent design.

In some instances, as in the torture debate, he has arguably articulated the administration's stance better than President Bush or his cabinet secretaries. And after years of opposing neoconservatives in their quest to spread democracy abroad, Mr. Krauthammer is now among the firmest supporters of the war in Iraq, so much so that he is occasionally a lightning rod for the war's critics.

But Mr. Krauthammer's views over the years have shifted, prompting many conservatives to wonder just what camp he belongs to.

"He doesn't waffle, and he certainly doesn't have, I think, certain sacrosanct positions," said Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute.

"That in and of itself can set you apart."

Gary Rosen, the managing editor of Commentary magazine, agreed. "He doesn't like wild-eye idealism," he said. "He's always wanted to be this shrewd, practical commentator, and I think he takes some pride in cutting through what he sees as the rhetoric on both sides."

Mr. Krauthammer has never fit any typical Washington profile: Trained in psychiatry, he has spent most of his adult life in a wheelchair after a diving accident left him paraplegic in his first year of medical school. He spent seven years practicing medicine before moving into politics, first as a policy planner for President Jimmy Carter and then, in the 1980 campaign, as a speechwriter for Walter Mondale.

He began writing for The New Republic in 1981, soon developing a rotation of columns - in The Washington Post, on the back page of Time magazine - that put him in touch with an outside-the-Beltway audience.

From the start he has viewed himself as an outside voice, arguing against what he calls the "nuclear freeze hysteria" in his first editorial in The New Republic. The editor at the time announced that the editorial - published at the height of the movement to halt nuclear proliferation - "caused more subscription cancellations than any other in the magazine's history," Mr. Krauthammer said.

Now, firmly part of The Weekly Standard orbit and a regular commentator on Fox News, he claimed the neoconservative mantle in an unconventional manner, shunning it at critical times - such as during the intervention in Bosnia.

Most neoconservatives would say they believe in the use of American military force to spread democracy around the globe. But Mr. Krauthammer says there must also be a compelling strategic interest for the United States to warrant intervention, a position more often associated with the so-called "realists," like Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser under the first President Bush.

Mr. Scowcroft recently criticized the Bush administration for arguing that the chief mission in Iraq is spreading democracy.

For his part, Mr. Krauthammer in his newspaper column also criticized Mr. Scowcroft's stance on the Iraq war.

As if such distinctions were not complicated enough, Mr. Krauthammer has developed his own ideological categories, identifying himself as a "democratic realist" - which he says is someone who believes the United States "will support democracy everywhere," but only commit "blood and treasure" - that is, troops - in places that present an overwhelming threat to the existence of the United States. For him, that meant Iraq in 1991 and 2003, but not Bosnia.

To most casual readers, such distinctions may come across as a muddle, but in intellectual circles, discerning Mr. Krauthammer's leanings is a parlor sport. Is he a neoconservative? A realist? Some mixture of the two? Or something else?

"The one curious thing - I don't know quite where he stands right now is - he really was not a neoconservative in a way, and in fact I think he's tried to deny he was a neoconservative, if you go back to all the debates of the 1990's," said Francis Fukuyama, who has been in a public rift with Mr. Krauthammer since last year, when Mr. Fukuyama assailed a speech his former friend gave defending Iraq.

William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, said Mr. Krauthammer, whom he has known for many years, has moved from the realist school toward the neoconservative position since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, - a shift that Mr. Krauthammer himself disputes.

And so it was that he defended the nine senators who voted against Mr. McCain's anti-torture amendment. That essay in The Weekly Standard set off a round of debate from all sides, including one from the Standard's more liberal counterpart, The New Republic. In the latest issue, Andrew Sullivan, its senior editor, answered Mr. Krauthammer point by point. And the cover was a parody of The Weekly Standard's.

But perhaps the latest measure of his influence came earlier this year from the White House, following the uproar over the Harriet Miers nomination. Mr. Krauthammer, who fiercely objected to Ms. Miers as unqualified for the job, mapped out an exit strategy for her in one of his columns - suggesting that if Republicans demanded documents about her White House service and Mr. Bush refused to provide them, the resulting stalemate would give Ms. Miers a graceful way to withdraw.

That was exactly what happened. Mr. Krauthammer said he had no prior inkling from the administration that they were taking that route; he has subsequently gotten credit for giving them a plan. And therein, he says, is a unifying theme of his recent writings. Referring to Ms. Miers, he said with a twinkle: "I didn't want to see her tortured."

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company