Plus ça change…

Give ‘em credit for consistency: the AEI crowd is clinging tightly to the Iraq project no matter how far south things go. Reuel Marc Gerecht has been touting his “sharia law will help democracy” line on the WSJ op-ed page and most recently on Meet the Press:

MR. GERECHT: Actually, I’m not terribly worried about [the apparent entrenchment in the Iraqi Constitution of Iranian/Saudi-style religious courts for civil law]. I mean, one hopes that the Iraqis protect women’s social rights as much as possible. It certainly seems clear that in protecting the political rights, there’s no discussion of women not having the right to vote. I think it’s important to remember that in the year 1900, for example, in the United States, it was a democracy then. In 1900, women did not have the right to vote. If Iraqis could develop a democracy that resembled America in the 1900s, I think we’d all be thrilled. I mean, women’s social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they’re there. I think they will be there. But I think we need to put this into perspective.

And AEI has a conference scheduled for October involving a bunch of AEI-friendly Iraqi politicos, including Salem Chalabi. I seriously doubt that any hard questions will be answered or any new thoughts hatched, but give them credit (?) for staying intractably pro-war, no matter what happens. It’d be as if massive stockpiles of WMD were found being loaded onto bombers the day we invaded, and then Iraq spontaneously erupted into a libertarian utopia and I were standing here waving my finger in the air, shouting, “It still wasn’t worth it!”

Comments

[Swopa]

My working hypothesis is that Gerecht, Jim Hoagland, Michael Rubin, and Christopher Hitchens are all on Ahmad Chalabi's payroll.

I haven't found any other theory that comes close to explaining their opinions.

[Anodyne]

Swopa,

Does Friedman have a sponsor or is he just in it for the free hummus?