Over at The Next Hurrah, emptywheel has a useful multiple choice test for our representatives. It’s made up of questions like this:
1. The terrorist group Al Qaeda is overwhelmingly made up of what kind of Muslims?
a. Shiite
b. Sunni
c. Kurds
d. Nation of Islam
The answer is (b). And it is a question that our new House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes recently got wrong. Jeff Stein has been asking really simple questions like this of our foreign policy makers and he keeps discovering that our leaders (Democrat, Republican, FBI, Pentagon) don’t know the answers. I don’t really have any explanation for this phenomenon. I know the President did not know the differenece between Shi’ites and Sunnis until long after he decided to invade Iraq. But the President is a famously incurious and reckless man. What accounts for this same deficit manifesting itself throughout the halls of power?
I know that understanding the demographics and theology of the Muslim world is an immensely complicated undertaking, and I know that the various factions and rivalries and fourteen hundred years of history can make the eyes glaze over. Being a U.S. Representative doesn’t require one to have the equivalent of a master’s degree in Near Eastern Studies. But, on the other hand, we’ve been at war with Muslims of one stripe or another since 9/11/01. We fought a war in the Middle East in 1991. Before that we had the Lebanon bombings and Iranian revolution. I don’t expect every Congressperson to be fully versed on the dynamics and difficulties of the region, but I do expect that of those that are on our intelligence, foreign relations, and armed services committees. I expect it of our counterterrorism officials. I certainly expect it of our President and his foreign policy team. And we are not getting it. Our leaders don’t have a damn clue what they’re dealing with.
“It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people,” he said. “Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli’s and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.“- Trent Lott, 5th Ranking Member on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Now, Trent Lott was the Senate Minority Leader until December 2002 and he helped usher through the Iraq War Resolution. But he never bothered to familiarize himself with the history of Islam or the internal dynamics of Iraq. I want to know how this is possible. It isn’t just the fault of Trent Lott. Our intelligence agencies should be educating our intelligence committees. Maybe they should assign them homework and pop quizzes.
I was already highly educated about Middle Eastern affairs when 9/11 happened. I followed our war there in 1991, and I knew the difference between a Kurd, an Arab, and a Persian, and I knew the sectarian make-up of the country. I knew that Najaf and Karbala were the holiest shrines in Shi’a Islam and that they were located in Iraq. I knew that Hezbollah was Shi’a. I knew that Iran was Shi’a. I knew Saddam was Sunni. But after 9/11 I went out a bought a Koran and a bunch of books about Islam and I read them. I did it because I wanted to know as much as I could about why 9/11 happened and what we could or should do in response. What the hell did the people on our intelligence committees do? They apparently did not do shit. Do you think our enemies are this willfully ignorant of American society? I don’t.
So I support emptywheel. No one should be placed in a position of overseeing or implementing our foreign policies unless they can answer a basic list of questions correctly. If you don’t know the difference between Shi’a and Sunni, and in which countries they predominate, then learn it immediately. Don’t tell me you support Israel’s decision to defend themselves by bombing Lebanon if you can’t tell me whether or not Hezbollah comes from the same sect as Ayatollah Sistani and Prime Minister Maliki. If you don’t know the answer, you don’t deserve to have an opinion.
Idiots.
