Ignorance on the Intelligence Committee

We've all heard the report that GWB didn't know that there was a difference between Sunni and Shiite before he ordered the invasion of Iraq which unleashed the current civil war. As AEadmin at AppliedEpistemology says:

I don't think Bush is unintelligent. He's something far worse and far more unforgivable in my mind - he's actively uncurious and anti-learning. For example Peter Galbraith [author of "The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End" and the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith] a former US diplomat brought three Iraqi opposition members to watch the Super Bowl with the president. "In the course of the conversation the Iraqis realized that the President was not aware that there was a difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. He looked at them and said, "You mean...they're not, you know, there, there's this difference. What is it about?"

Let's make something pretty clear here. In 2003 we were well on the way to war (we went to war in March - the Superbowl is at the end of January). At this point the president not knowing a major fault line in Iraqi society (and indeed the Muslim world) is shocking. Apparently 9/11 didn't make all the difference in George's attitude to learning - namely it's not necessary to even learn what's all this fuss with Islam or why the Sunni or Shia hate each other.

Well that was January 2003, but how about this... Jeff Stein writing in the NYTimes [h/t ThinkProgress] tells us that, for the last several months, he has been...

wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”

A “gotcha” question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I’m not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who’s on what side today, and what does each want?

After all, wouldn’t British counterterrorism officials responsible for Northern Ireland know the difference between Catholics and Protestants? In a remotely similar but far more lethal vein, the 1,400-year Sunni-Shiite rivalry is playing out in the streets of Baghdad, raising the specter of a breakup of Iraq into antagonistic states, one backed by Shiite Iran and the other by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states.

A complete collapse in Iraq could provide a haven for Al Qaeda operatives within striking distance of Israel, even Europe. And the nature of the threat from Iran, a potential nuclear power with protégés in the Gulf states, northern Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, is entirely different from that of Al Qaeda. It seems silly to have to argue that officials responsible for counterterrorism should be able to recognize opportunities for pitting these rivals against each other.

But so far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies.

Examples include: Willie Hulon, chief of the FBI’s new national security branch:

O.K., I asked, trying to help, what about today? Which one is Iran — Sunni or Shiite? He thought for a second. “Iran and Hezbollah,” I prompted. “Which are they?”

He took a stab: “Sunni.”

Wrong.

[...]

Take Representative Terry Everett, a seven-term Alabama Republican who is vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence.

“Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” I asked him a few weeks ago.

Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: “One’s in one location, another’s in another location. No, to be honest with you, I don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something.”

To his credit, he asked me to explain the differences. I told him briefly about the schism that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and how Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite nations while the rest of the Muslim world is mostly Sunni. “Now that you’ve explained it to me,” he replied, “what occurs to me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area.”

Well, d'uh! Sort of makes you feel safe and secure, doesn't it?

UPDATE: In a piece called Empire of Ignorance, Billmon piles on:

Add the fact that America hasn't mentally outgrown its obsolete isolationist tendencies, and still finds it difficult to admit she even has an empire, and it's not surprising that knowledge of foreign cultures is scarce in our ruling circles -- not withstanding the fact that we're a nation of immigrants. It doesn't help that the political movement and party in power for the better part of the past thirty years has been deeply suspicious of, if not openly hostile to, such expertise, as well as to academia and the diplomatic service in general.

Would we be better off if we let the FBI and the politicians play cops and robbers and left the running of the empire to a British-style cadre of foreign policy professionals -- the kind of people who not only can tell the difference between Sunni and Shi'a, but could write PhD dissertations about it? Maybe, although the British experience (not to mention that of the old CIA) suggests it's no panacea. The Brits, after all, had T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell, and they still failed in the Middle East -- although not as badly as Don Rumsfeld and Condi Rice.

But we might at least be spared the national embarrassment of having dumb-as-dirt congressmen and women freeze like deer in the headlights when asked even the most fundamental (so to speak) questions about the Middle East and the "war" on terrorism.