On knowing Shiite from Shinola

This is a follow-up to my recent post on the lizard brain and contemporary politics.

Last week, NYTimes op-ed contributor Jeff Stein published the results of an informal study he'd been conducting:

For the past several months, I’ve 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. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?

Stein shares the answers he got from the head of the FBI's national security branch, the vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence, and the head of a House intelligence subcommittee charged with overseeing the C.I.A.’s performance in recruiting Islamic spies and analyzing information.

I'll give you one sample of the responses he got:

“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.”

They're not all quite that painful to read, and Stein admits that some of his interviewees knew the difference quite clearly.

But still. How did we get to this point? Well, just to belabor the obvious for a few moments:

I've already recently mentioned my appreciation for SEIU president Andy Stern's passing remark that a big difference between Democratic and Republican strategy toward presidential campaigning boils down to the Democrats thinking they're nominating someone to be a contestant on "Jeopardy!, while the Republicans are nominating someone to be on "American Idol."

The Dems build a campaign around advancing someone with intelligence radiating from every pore, the smartest kid in the class who always raises his (his, so far, at least) hand and reminds the teachers they forgot to assign homework.

The Republicans prefer to run at us with someone we'd like, someone we'd feel comfortable with.

As a "Jeopardy!"-nerd type myself, it pains me to the core to admit that the Republicans are on to something. In fact, that's about as serviceable an explanation for the 2000 election as any you'll find.

Of course, there were those among his supporters who recognized that the Frat Boy Who Would Be King was not the sharpest tool in the shed. He had a certain cunning, a family knack for inducing loyalty in others, or at least shaming them into obedience, through a mixture of flattery, condescension, and public humiliation--a gift from his mother, like the twisted smile he got from his father. But actual depth of mind and breadth of learning--not so much.

Not to worry, they said, for Bush the Younger would surround himself with competent people who would do the actual intellectual heavy lifting. Bush, the "MBA President" would delegate and oversee.

Yeah, well, we pretty much know how that turned out.

Many of the "competent types" he surrounded himself with were retreads and survivors and narrowly acquitted felons from the worst parts of the administrations of Reagan and Bush the Elder. Most of them were considered nutbags even then.

The rest, it has so often seemed, were heck-of-a-job cronies, think-tank fantasists, or industry insiders brought in specifically to cripple the agencies they led. The ones like Scowcroft who were and remain closest to Bush 41, a president who looks better by comparison for each additional day his son stays in office, have been frozen out of the process, casualties of Junior's world-class Oedipal issues.

And at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, once word filtered down that Republican members of Congress wouldn't be required to engage in the pesky, wonky, know-it all-ism of oversight, such tedious fact-finding (and -remembering) would quickly be pushed aside for more important matters: campaign fundraising and preparing the way for individual Members' eventual slide over to right-leaning lobby shops on K Street.

Basic subject-matter competence: No longer a qualification for Republican leadership.

Had enough?