Former C.I.A. Middle East specialist, Reuel Marc Gerecht, said on “Meet the Press,” that U.S. democracy in 1900 didn’t let women vote. If Iraqi democracy resembled that “we’d all be thrilled,” he said. “I mean, women’s social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy.”
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Who the hell is Reuel Marc Gerecht, you ask?
Reuel Marc Gerecht is the Director of the Middle East Initiative at the Project for the New American Century and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is recently a contributor to Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign Policy (Editors Robert Kagan & William Kristol; Encounter Books, 2000) and is the author under the pseudonym of Edward Shirley of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy’s Journey into Revolutionary Iran (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997). A former Middle Eastern specialist in the CIA, Mr. Gerecht writes frequently on the Middle East, Central Asia, terrorism, and intelligence…
You can learn more about this asshole at Right Web:
Regarding the then-impending war in Iraq, Gerecht said: “If President Bush follows his own logic and compels his administration to follow him against Iraq and Iran, then he will sow the seeds for a new, safer, more liberal order in the Middle East.”
And he considers himself an expert. He’s actually a hack who will say anything Texaco or Chevron wants him to say. No more women’s rights in Iraq? Gerecht is thrilled.
he is a shrill and if I am not mistaken, he is x-cia too. right?? I have heard him speak at different times for siad orgs. and I do not think much of him at all. The AEI is full of neocons types and their handlers.
CIA? Yes. Apparently working at the same time for State. From SourceWatch:
Consultant on Afghanistan, CBS News, 1999-2000
Political and consular officer, U.S. Department of State, 1985-1994
Middle Eastern specialist, Central Intelligence Agency, 1985-1994
So he was a “declared” spy? Wonder who vetted him at CBS?
It also implies he was in Larry Johnson’s class. Larry, however, never suggested invading Iran and Iraq would lead to nirvana, nor did he ever suggest we would be thrilled with a democracy with circa 1900 women’s rights.
Just noting a curiosity. The man is obviously 2 cards short of a full deck. And somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun.
he’s a genius. He’s just turned his back on ‘the force’.
Whoa, you guys ever seen this:
http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb06?_GERECHT_REUEL_MARC
Click the name and it creates a diagram to all other cross-referenced names. Here’s the explanation.
I still need the card.
He’s actually a hack who will say anything Texaco or Chevron wants him to say.
Boo, is that from something you read about him, or a safe hunch?
I base it on what he says, and compare it to what he obviously knows. He is well versed in the Middle East, so he can’t possibly believe the crap he spews.
.
Don’t you hate it when you register for a class, hoping for a good old-fashioned, unbiased education, only to discover your teacher is a total fascist? Oh wait – I mean feminist?
[snip]
But I wonder, is learning about women in itself so offensive? Or, is it the idea that learning about women is some sort of subversive feminist indoctrination from our teachers – an inappropriate touting of irrelevant personal ideology? Or is it merely that ugly word “feminism” that we hate so much?
[snip]
Perhaps it has to do with the misconception that American women have enough freedoms. These days, girls get better grades than boys, and more women than men graduate from college. What more can we ask for – equal pay for men and overqualified women? That’s crazy talk!
Nevertheless, women have all the rights they deserve.
Interestingly, that’s pretty much what Islamic fundamentalists in Iraq say about Iraqi women, as they attempt to write them out of their new constitution.
We can learn a lot about women’s roles when we watch democracy in action.
For instance, I learned last week that “women’s social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy” – or so says Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Middle East specialist and fellow at the American Enterprise institute.
Must read her column …
~~~
rights weren’t essential to the formation of democracy in he United States either. Just like women and blacks.
To heck with them all.
So let’s write an Iraqi Constitution that leaves out rights for Arabs, Muslims, Women, and Blacks.
Oh… Iraq is an Arab and Muslim country you say? Oh, well, that’s a horse of a different feather then.
Now what would the equivalent be? Hmmm….
How about an Iraqi Constitution that leaves out rights for women and Americans and Christians?
Yeah… that’s the ticket.
It is not critical to the formation of democracy in Iraq to promote the social rights of Christians so lets just leave them out.
who needs liars?
First off, voting rights are not the issue. Women are losing personal and religious freedom and property rights which American women in large measure had at the beginning of the century.
Second, what inevitable march of progress is Gerecht invoking here? Do women’s rights grow back like burnt forests? Iraq is going from relative gender parity to profound subjection of women. That’s progress?
Third, what unavoidable conditions is trying to put into context? Everything wrong with Iraq today results directly from 100 years of meddling by Britain and the United States. The Iraqi constitution is the political structure that our regime has decided is good enough for the backward Iraqi people.
And already we are off to a good start. Never mind the ratification process. It’s just a loyalty test. For when the Americans leave.
Of course women will vote. And pray.
on your overall point, but I think it is going way too far to blame everything that is wrong with Iraq on outsiders. A lot of what is wrong with Iraq can be attributed to faults within their own culture, just as a lot of what is wrong with America can be attributed to faults within ours.
The ruthless machinations of recent Iraqi political history reflect the cost, in freedom and civility, of maintaining a stable, autoimmune government within a once and future colony of distinct dispossessed nations.
If we take a country for the purpose of changing its government, we are responsible for the result. The subjection of women to Sharia is not endemic to Iraq.
The Iraqi people have not had the latitude to have their own problems. Our problems are of our own making, and ours to repair. Theirs are not. Their “cultural flaws” are, at best, the rot of paralysis overlaid with the aggregated effects of drive-by nation-building and global empire, from the British to Hitler to Bush.
Bush shill more than corporate one. The big oil companies weren’t too thrilled about the Iraq war – they want stability above all. I imagine their dream scenario would have been an under the table deal to end sanctions in return for juicy contracts from Saddam.
Also he is a Middle East expert. This isn’t one of those off the cuff clueless neocons. He’s an ideologue, but a very well informed one. We’re not talking Michael Ledeen raving looney type. And as far as I can tell he’s not even the sort of bigoted neocon expert that Daniel Pipes is. (Pipes also genuinely knows the subject but is just as bigoted as the worst of the fundie preachers)
Finally, I remember reading someplace that his pet idea was that America should accept semi-theocratic, neutral or mildly anti-American semi-democracies in place of supporting pro-American dictators. That way the Islamists would get to ‘own’ all the problems and what’s more, any hostility to the government would either rebound to America’s benefit or at least not fuel anti-Americanism. I assume that attitude comes from his focus on Iran where that scenario has played out.
So as neo-cons pontificating about the ME go, Gerecht actually seems to me to be the least objectionable. Try Pipes or Ledeen for the really scary stuff – my favorite of the latter was a piece where he argued that France was supporting al Qaeda, and we’re not talking ‘objective’ support in the Leninist sense.
What do I win?
Gerecht is a rigid and irrational academic ideologue who no longer has any sense of how far removed from reality and practicality his grand and simplistic notions are, (just like all the other PNACers).
He’s sort of like a more accomplished version of Jonah Goldberg, intellectually active and clever but fundamentally wrong on just about every idea and policy he would have us all believe in and support.
This was an amazing statement. If America circa 1900 is a great role model for democracy, does that imply we would be almost as happy if Iraq chose to emulate America circa 1861?