Midge Decter

Midge Decter        (author, journalist, neoconservative)
Born	Midge Rosenthal 25 July, 1927 Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
Religion	Jew
Spouse	Norman Podhoretz
Member of	American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, Center for Security Policy/National Security Advisory Council, Committee for the Free World, Committee on the Present Danger/Members, Resistance International
Neocon "polemical powerhouse"

Midge Decter (née Midge Rosenthal) is one of the original drivers of the neo-conservative movement with her spouse, Norman Podhoretz. With Donald Rumsfeld, Decter is the former co-chair of the Committee for the Free World and a founder of the Independent Women's Forum. She is the mother of right-wing syndicated columnist, John Podhoretz. Her first job was secretary to the editor of Commentary, the intellectual magazine published by the American Jewish Committee. She later worked as an assistant editor at Midstream magazine, managing editor at Commentary, editor at Harper's Magazine, and was an editor at Legacy Books and at Basic Books.

According to Jim Lobe:

"Podhoretz and his spouse, Midge Decter, a polemical powerhouse in her own right, created a formidable political team in the 1970s as they deserted the Democratic Party, and then, as leaders of the Committee on the Present Danger — like PNAC a coalition of mainly Jewish, neo-conservatives and more traditional right-wing hawks like Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld — helped lay the foreign-policy foundation for the rise of Ronald Reagan.

Quotes

Posted 22 May 2004, at Max Blumenthal's Blogspot:

“We're not in the Middle East to bring sweetness and light to the world. We're there to get something we and our friends in Europe depend on. Namely, oil.”
Midge Decter (21 May 2004) 

Afflitiations

Think Tanks and Lobbies

• Accuracy in Media - National Advisory Board
• Advisory Committee on European Democracy and Security - co-chair
• American Jewish Committee
• Capital Research Center
• Center for Security Policy
• Coalition for a Democratic Majority - National Chairman
• Committee for the Free World - Executive Director
• Committee on the Present Danger
• Foreign Policy Research Institute - Board of Advisors
• Heritage Foundation - board of trustees
• Hoover Institution
• Hudson Institute
• Independent Women's Forum
• Institute on Religion and Public Life - Senior Fellow
• Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress
• Jamestown Foundation - Advisory Board
• Nicaraguan Freedom Fund - Board of Directors
• Project for the New American Century
• Radio Broadcasting to Cuba - appointed by Reagan to the Advisory board on March 13, 1985.

Editorial

• Commentary Magazine - Managing Editor
• Harper's - Executive Editor
• Midstream - Assistant Editor
• The Saturday Review - Managing Editor

Publications

• Losing the First Battle, Winning the War
• The liberated woman and other Americans
• Liberal Parents, Radical Children
• The new chastity and other arguments against women's liberation
• Always Right: Selected Writings of Midge Decter
• Rumsfeld : A Personal Portrait. The "Rumsfeld" of the title is Department of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Maureen Dowd's "Drunk on Rummy", to the say the least, provides insight on the long-term relationship between Decter and Rumsfeld, as well as interesting notes on fellow neo-con Paul Dundes Wolfowitz.

Resources

• Always Right. Selected Writings of Midge Decter (Edited, with an introduction, by Phillip N. Truluck) offered by Heritage Foundation.
• Midge Decter, Breaking Away, Hoover Digest, 2002: "Adapted from the new book An Old Wife's Tale: My Seven Decades in Love and War, by Midge Decter (Regan Books/HarperCollins, 2001).
• Maureen Dowd, Drunk On Rummy, 28 September 2003. (Accessed: 2 October 2007)

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism	2 July 1979	5 July 1979	Israel Jerusalem	The birthplace of the "War on Terror" doctrine, "a major international forum for the movement against détente".

 

Event Witnessed

Event	Location(s)	Description
Washington Conference on International Terrorism	US Washington DC	A key conference in establishing the "War On Terror", 5 years after the seminal Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism

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