Fat, Drunk, and Stupid Is No Way to Go Through Life, Son...

But if you are a Republican Congressman or a Republican-appointed bureaucrat, it is.

Billmon watches the clown show:

Whiskey Bar: An Empire of Idiots: Reading this article, all I could think of was Dean Wormer's line from Animal House: "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son." Except I would make it: "fat, stupid and in power."

It's been almost 30 years since the Islamic revolution in Iran, 23 years since the Beruit bombings, 11 years since the Kobhar Towers bombing, three and a half years since the start of the Iraq War. And this is what the FBI's number one point man on national security knows about the difference between Sunni and Shi'a Islam:

A few weeks ago, I took the F.B.I.'s temperature again. At the end of a long interview, I asked Willie Hulon, chief of the bureau's new national security branch, whether he thought that it was important for a man in his position to know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. "Yes, sure, it's right to know the difference," he said. "It's important to know who your targets are." That was a big advance over 2005. So next I asked him if he could tell me the difference. He was flummoxed. "The basics goes back to their beliefs and who they were following," he said. "And the conflicts between the Sunnis and the Shia and the difference between who they were following." 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."

Um, I'll take TV sitcoms for $100, Alex.

Hulon is actually one of the smart guys -- he at least knows that there is a difference between Sunni and Shi'a, even if he doesn't know which is which. But when the writer -- the national security reporter for Congressional Quarterly -- took his question up to Capitol Hill, he found out just how deep the well of ignorance runs:

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."

Yeah, it's a family thing -- you know, like the Corleones and the Tattaglias.

Representative Jo Ann Davis, a Virginia Republican who heads a House intelligence subcommittee charged with overseeing the C.I.A.'s performance in recruiting Islamic spies and analyzing information, was similarly dumbfounded when I asked her if she knew the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. "Do I?" she asked me. A look of concentration came over her face. "You know, I should." She took a stab at it: "It's a difference in their fundamental religious beliefs. The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa. But I think it's the Sunnis who're more radical than the Shia."

Now she's gone and hurt Sheikh Nasrallah's feelings.

Let's review. We have: The head of the FBI's national security branchThe Vice Chairman of the House Intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence.The Chairwoman of the House Intelligence subcommittee charged with overseeing the C.I.A.'s recruiting efforts in the Islamic world

And they each know less -- probably much less -- about the most critical religious divide in the Middle East (the same one that is currently getting U.S. soldiers killed at the rate of about three a day) than your average commentator at Little Green Footballs....

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.

Comments

[abhi]

this is a disgrace. even a college student could tell you the difference between sunni & shia..how many reality checks does the gop need to realise that they need competent people in such important posts. is all this incompetence the result of nepotismor blatant ignorance?

[howard]

i just want to note that if all blogging did for us was to allow us to read billmon, that (in the words of the seder) would have been enough....

[g]

Is the formal difference between Shiite and Sunni really that important in the Middle East? Was the formal difference between Catholic and Protestant important in Northern Ireland?

[al]

"Is the formal difference between Shiite and Sunni really that important in the Middle East? Was the formal difference between Catholic and Protestant important in Northern Ireland?"

q, change your name to Ali, get a passport with your new name on it and go for a walk somewhere in the Sunni Triangle.

[Gene O'Grady]

Puzzled about the reference to TE Lawrence and Gertrude Bell. As I understand it, Lawrence actually had a pretty good sense of the possibilities on the ground in the Middle East, while his academic training was hardly what you would get a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies nowadays -- dissertation on Crusader Castles, but since he did a lot of work in situ he learned about the area and people, just as contemporary classical archaeologists who work at Dura or Caesarea probably have a better feeling for people and place than a guy like Paul Wolfowitz or Douglas Feith. Gertrude Bell was one of the early Oxbridge women graduates, studying history, I'm not sure of what but I can guess the methodology. But she was heavily influenced by a rather peculiar take on the women issue of her day and a somewhat Romantic rebellion-cum-entrapment in the mores of her social class. I presume the current American university does a lot better? And I don't mean in "International Relations" departments!

[jerry]

I take it these guys weren't alive in 1979 when we all "learned" to hate the Shiites.

[billy]

Not sure I'm getting the point here. That there are different strands of Islam does not account for the behaviour of Bush, nor should it give him reason to persecute one and not the other. And the subtext here, that Shias are somehow more "radical", is misleading. The Shia tradition is significant not simply because it took its prophets from a different lineage, but because it was tempered by the Zoroastrian tradition of equality and accountability. Long story. (BTW: T.E Lawrence was far from the Arab expert portrayed in the movie, or in his own writings.)

[Jacob T. Levy]

Sigh.

And: ugh.

[C. L. Ball]

"Yeah, it's a family thing -- you know, like the Corleones and the Tattaglias."

Yep, it's a family thing -- like Ali ibn Abu Talib, Muhammed's cousin, fighting Muawiyah of the Banu Adi clan, who held Ali responsible for not punishing the killers of his fellow clansman, the 3rd Caliph Uthman, who Ali succeeded.

The *origins* of the Sunni-Shia divide have as much relevance to the current Iraq conflict as the origins of the Protestant-Catholic split have to resolving the Northern Ireland conflict or the theological divide between Bhuddism and Hinduism have to ending the Sri Lankan civil war.

As for the Sunni being more radical, which sect spawned al Qaeda, which couches its rhetoric in aspirations for restoring the Caliphate and which spawned opposition nationalist movements in Iran and Lebanon? How many Shia are blowing up trains, buses, and skyscrapers in Europe and North America? If the difference is so important then Israel can readily dismiss reports of a Sunni HAMAS and Shia Iran alliance.

[christofay]

"Fat, drunk, and stupid, is no way to go through life," we're talking about the United States here, aren't we? It's funny considering our leading industry is borrowing.

[andres]

"As for the Sunni being more radical, which sect spawned al Qaeda, which couches its rhetoric in aspirations for restoring the Caliphate and which spawned opposition nationalist movements in Iran and Lebanon? How many Shia are blowing up trains, buses, and skyscrapers in Europe and North America? If the difference is so important then Israel can readily dismiss reports of a Sunni HAMAS and Shia Iran alliance."

Let's not overexaggerate. It's true that the current crop of terrorists aiming at the US is Sunni, but there's nothing that makes this unavoidable. The Sh'ia, however, include Hezbollah which takes periodic potshots at Israel, and being from the less terrorist sect did not stop the Iranian revolutionaries from taking our people hostage in 1979. Nor does being Sh'ia prevent death squads from summarily executing Sunni troublemakers in today's Iraq.

From the point of view of the US, what matters is not which branch of Islam we're dealing with or the origins of the schism, but what we've done to piss off each branch lately. For various reasons, the Sunnis feel more aggrieved now, but that hasn't always been the case and can still change in the future.

And what matters even more is that the US government stops looking at the Middle East as the strategic (spelled O-I-L) lynchpin to its empire which requires keeping a lid on Muslim troublemakers who think they should run their own countries. ie the US needs to seriously get behind democratization in the Middle East, and btw it's hard for people to democratize when their staring down an invader's cannon muzzle.

[Jon Fernquest]

"...I asked..whether...it was important ...to know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. "Yes, sure, it's right to know the difference," he said. "It's important to know who your **targets** are."

IMHO The word "target" should be used less. The semi-fluent may find it scary, the beyond fluent find it good for an ironic laugh or two.

When I used this phrase with the French director of the Alliance Francaise in Chiang Rai, Thailand he broke into uncontrollable laughter. This essentially military word has been metaphorically extended into business:

target audience, target group, production target, sales target, recruitment target, target oriented, target driven, target audience, product mix target, deliver a target, main target market, target appeals to, modest target, ambitious target...

[Doug]

We do have a most excellent cadre of foreign policy professionals. The political leadership is simply ignoring them.

[Tom Womack]

The American foreign policy professionals that I've met have been uniformly stunning; they seem to know almost everything about almost everywhere, and will sit up late into the night discussing the role in Nigerian politics of the competitive evangelising by Muslims and by Christians of the animists of the interior.

But American high-level civil servants don't seem to have got the Sir Humphrey part of controlling their high-level politicians down yet.

[rea]

Well, but of course, the whole bloody Iraq War was premised on the notion that we could throw out the secular Sunnis running things, replace them with fundamentalist Shiites, and end up with a government we could trust to side with us rather than fundamentalst Shiite Iran. Bad idea.

[DavidDickson]

Here is Henry Kissinger on the difference between Sunni and Shiites in Iraq.

In his 1/13/02 column in The Washington Post, "Phase II and Iraq," Kissinger wrote the following: "A second prerequisite for a military campaign against Iraq is to define the political outcome. Local opposition would in all likelihood be sustained by the Kurdish minority in the north and the Shiite minority in the south. But if we are to enlist the Sunni majority, which now dominates Iraq, in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, we need to make clear that Iraq's disintegration is not the goal of American policy."

Note his reference to "the Shiite minority in the south" and "the Sunni majority, which now dominates Iraq."

After The Post recently reported how extensively the Bush 43 White House (including the president) relies on the outside counsel of Henry K, I wrote to The Post suggesting that they should finally issue a formal correction to Henry K's 2002 column confusing the relative sizes of the Sunni and Shiite populations in Iraq. Other than the perfunctory automated reply acknowledging that The Post's corrections box had received my e-mail, I have not heard from The Post; and, of course, the correction has not been issued -- not even to the Nexis version of the column.

[kharris]

I don't know that Whiskey Bar's point was that the particular knowledge of the origin of the Sunni/Shia split is critical to making good policy or doing good investigative work. I'm not sure his point was that one sect is more radical or US-hating than the other. My impression of his point was that ignorance is a bad position from which to work. Bush reportedly didn't know that there was more than one Muslim sect prior to invading Iraq (where was he during his Dad's war?), but was certain that democracy could florish in Muslim countries. How does one arrive at certain conclusions from a position of ignorance? Same problem for the FBI, Congress, the lot.

[ajay]

It's bad not to know the difference between Sunni and Shia, and which one Iran is, because that means you could get briefings about "insurgents in the Sunni Triangle" and think "aha, they must be getting support from their Sunni brethren in Iran!"

But it's cripplingly, awesomely stupid not to know that the two sects exist. It's like someone not knowing that North Korea is actually a different country from South Korea. Even if you're a bit hazy on the origins of Stalinist Communism or the politics of Syngman Rhee, this is basic stuff!

[freejack]

-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."

-"One's in one location, another's in another location…… I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something."

-“…The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa…”

Reminds me of the scene in the remake of Ocean’s 11 where Pitt’s character is teaching some Hollywood dilettantes how to play poker.

“Read ‘em and weep, all red!”

Only our dilettantes are playing against real professionals and using our national treasure to bet with.

We are in a world of shit.

[Reader]

Speaking of Syngman Rhee (above comment), a Washington Post article on Monday http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/15/AR2006101500699.html starts out "The story of how Syngman Rhee built one of the largest Asian food distributors in the Washington area starts with a container of dried squid." No indication as to whether the two Syngman Rhees are related.

[TomC]

Do the senior Democrats on those subcommittees know any better than their Republican counterparts?

[Auto]

Knowing lots about the theological diffs between the Shia and Sunni flavors of Islam may not matter much in terms of practical policies. Just as the theological diffs between RC Christianity and Protestant Christianity don't drive policy for resolving sectarian strife in Northern Ireland.

But, damn, if you can't give a quick one-sentence explanation of the diffs between Shia-Sunni Islam (or RC and Protestant Christianity) you are unlikely to have a clue as to what makes for effective policies and what doesn't.

What mind-boggling ignorance.

[bigTom]

The real problem is that our political selection process does not respect intellect and knowledge. Remember how in the 2000 elections Bush's ignorance of foreign leaders names was obvious, but wasn't an issue. Again in 04, Kerry clearly showed he knew more, but "values" trumps intelligence everyday. We only hope that leaders once elected obtain and listen to well informed advisors.
So whats the issue with Henry K. Did he really not know about the relative populations? Or was he confounding ruling-class with majority? Maybe he just has senile dementia?

[liberal]

g wrote, "Is the formal difference between Shiite and Sunni really that important in the Middle East? Was the formal difference between Catholic and Protestant important in Northern Ireland?"

I'm sympathetic to the argument that the actual history of the two movements _as religions_ doesn't seem that important. But what _should_ count as important is stuff like (1) Iraq is majority Shiite, (2) Iran is Shiite, much of the rest of the Arab world (or at least the leaders) is Sunni.

Otherwise one misses the point that there is a potential natural affinity between Iraq and Iran. Which really would be ignorant.

[Tom]

Haven't read all the posts, but both Shia and Sunni have radical groups. Apparently the Iranian Secret Service tried to have Bin Laden killed.

This goes way beyond Sunni and Shia. While generalizations are dangerous and inaccurate, most Americans tend to be culturally unaware. If you are visiting this site I doubt you are included in "most americans". Most of the "cultural awareness" I have seen in U.S. is made-up, feel-good, hogwash. Seriously, as an example have you ever met a real African (i.e, living in Africa), who has not visited the US, who has heard of or celebrated Kwanzaa (sp?)?

[Barkley Rosser]

One very important point that nobody has mentioned so far that a policymaker deciding on invading a major middle eastern country ought to know about the history of the Sunnis and Shi'a is that historically the Sunnis were dominant in most places politically, socially, and economically, with the oppressed Shi'a historically angry about this matter, with Iran one of the few major exception (and such a policymaker should also know that Iran is not an Arab country).

This basic reality was true in both Iraq and Lebanon and has been basic to any understanding of what is going on in both of those countries. This reality is also related to that of the historical dominance in Northern Ireland of the Protestants and the related aggrieved position of the Catholics, even if one does not know the history of all the theological disputes, etc.

This basic reality was certainly the case

[Dan]

Your article reminded me of an old Star Trek episode ("Spock's Brain") in which the prerequisite nubile alien female humanoids stole Spock's gray matter in order to save their planet, because obviously they didn't have brains of their own. After the Captain has been pleading with them to return it, one of the stamps her foot and whines, "BRAIN, BRAIN, WHAT IS BRAIN?"

To me, that is the current world of politics, national and local. There is less and less true dialogue and heated debate than there is fear mongering and personal debasement. In one local election here the only position one candidate took was to claim that the other candidate let pedophiles go unpunished, threatening the safety of our children.

And so it goes...And so the fear batters us like a Noreaster, one wave of mind-numbing terror and horror after the next. The problem being, as you know, that fear like that does NOT motivate to action. It befuddles and paralyzes.

We are not safer in this country. We are more afraid, but not safer.

There's a great new book that just came out about this sort of Viral Fear by J. Acosta called THE NEXT OSAMA (www.jodere.com). It follows 4 main characters as they fall into the Major Media Slipstream and tumble not only out of control but into each other.

It's a great read.

But it begs the question: what do we do about this? Fear is useful if we not only have something real to do, but if we have leadership to guide us to do it.

When people are afraid they desperately need leadership, authority, a trusted guide. Otherwise, unless we have that authority internalized (as do survivalists and many stress-hardy combatants), we stand paralyzed.

Ever watch someone watch Television? That's the state of America. Now, that's scary!

Dan

[w]

Palestine

http://www.saudi-us-relations.org/articles/2006/interviews/061108-khouri-interview.html

So I think it is not so much a Shia problem as it is an Iranian radical problem. The fear is not that the Shiites are getting stronger and Iran is empowering the Shiites in the Middle East. You have Saudi Shiites and you have Shiites from other Arab countries but I think the Arab identity is probably stronger than the Shiite identity.

I always thought nationalism was stronger than religious identity in most cases. You saw this with the Iraqi Shia in Iraq during the war with Iran. National identity is very strong. What you have is an Iranian government that is radical and exporting this radicalism. They are trying to mobilize allies and partners around the region to form a loose resistance and rejection front including Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brothers, Syria, some progressives, some nationalists, whatever. The purpose is Iran’s fight against American hegemony and against Israeli occupation as they see it. That’s what worries the Saudis a little bit. This is my perception and you see it in situations where the Saudis try to step in and play a mediating role when they can. For example, as with Syria and Lebanon, at one point they were trying to play a role

SUSRIS: They certainly played a significant role in the recent Lebanon crisis, providing $1.5 billion to stabilize the economy and for emergency relief. Is this the type of role we can expect to see them play?

Khouri: Well, they get drawn into these situations sometimes. They are a major Arab power -- a financial power, a religious power. Their ideology is low key but they do have an ideological orientation. It is quite pro-Western and pro-free market. But they also have very principled stands on issues so I think they’re constantly trying to balance all of these factors.

They are not very happy with the mainstream Islamist movements, in my opinion, but they can probably live with them better than they can live with the terrorist movements.

The Saudis are challenged by the circumstances of the region around them and their own terror and radicalism problems at home. They are challenged to be more decisive and more active diplomatically, probably more than they would like to be. Their tendency is to be low key and quiet, but you can’t have such a big power in the region being docile. And of course you know there is the Iranian issue with nuclear weapons and the threats against Iran that result.

SUSRIS: That’s where I was going next, the nuclear question. The Saudis are in a difficult situation. Riyadh doesn’t want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon but also doesn’t want the United States to resort to a military confrontation. How can those positions be reconciled?

Khouri: Yes, it is a concern for the Saudis, and their concerns are twofold. They are concerned about Iran having a nuclear weapon and throwing its weight around the region. Iran is not going to actually use such a weapon. I think the Saudis are just concerned about a more assertive Iran.

They are concerned about the implications of an American-Israeli attack against Iran to stop the nuclear developments. That would be bad because they might get dragged into it. They might be a target of Iranian revenge. They are concerned about the environmental issues -- nuclear fallout. Obviously, everybody in the Gulf shares that concern. The Saudis are concerned about a radical change in the balance of power in the region. If the West accommodates Iran with some kind of arrangement that asserts Iran’s supremacy in the Gulf the Saudis obviously wouldn’t like that. If there is a deal between Iran and the West, which is possible, I think that would allow Iran to have continued strong influence in the region.

The way to offset that is to solve the Arab-Israeli problem. When you solve the Arab-Israeli problem you take away a huge element that Iran exploits to penetrate the region and develop close working relations beyond their borders. If you solve the Arab-Israeli question you wouldn’t have Hamas and Iran; and Syria and Iran. It would change the dynamics in the region, and therefore change Iran’s relationship with the region.

Saudi concerns about Iran fall into several categories but a lot of the issues are not in the Saudi’s hands to do anything about. It’s the Iranian-American relationship that’s key.

[w]

The end to this war, i.e., conflict will come about as a result of education in the form of web-based information searches which will educate as many people as possible -- versus allowing a handful of un-educated Democrates and or Repblicans to mis-inform the public in regard to mis-guided policy making!

The vote has been cast and people want change, not more of the same, which implies a new approach to understanding the core issues related to this conflict and thus moving away from the corporate-like profit, which IMHO motivated The Bush Machine (in the first place). However, with that said, corporate power should now be re-focued in America to harness new energy sources and become less dependent on Middle east oil!

One can only imagine the "good" which could have been done with $800 Billion, or whatever has been spent on killing people in Iraq!

Change must come from educating the masses and not allowing a new era of political illusions!