Sunni or Shia? A costly ignorance

William Buckley, Jr. once wrote that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the 2,000 members of the Harvard faculty. At times, that aphorism isn't as ludicrous as it sounds. If, for example, our government followed the will of the American people on Iraq, we'd have a timetable for withdrawal that would bring all American troops home by the middle of 2007. Unfortunately, at the moment, we could use more Harvard faculty at the top levels of government, as our elected officials have shown a shocking ignorance of some of the basic facts about international terrorism and the civil war in Iraq.

Take, for instance, the following conversation between Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) and Jeff Stein, the national security editor at Congressional Quarterly: "Al Qaeda is what," I [Stein] asked, "Sunni or Shia?"

"Al Qaeda, they have both," Reyes said. "You're talking about predominately?"

"Sure," I said, not knowing what else to say.

"Predominantly — probably Shiite," he ventured.

Of course, as any Wilson School professor (or anyone who has recently opened up a newspaper) would know, Reyes is dead wrong. As Stein put it, "Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they'd slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball." Moreover, Reyes isn't a freshman representative who can justify his ignorance with inexperience. He's a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and was selected by Nancy Pelosi to be the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Republicans are no more informed than Democrats are. Of Sunnis and Shiites, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said, "They all look the same to me." Stein asked Rep. Terry Everett (R-Al.) and Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-Va.), two senior Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, if they knew the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. Davis guessed, "The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa," and Everett simply admitted, "To be honest with you, I don't know."

It's appalling that five years after Sept. 11, 2001 and three years after America's disastrous invasion of Iraq, the representatives in charge of overseeing our military and our intelligence agencies remain in the dark about vitally important aspects of Islam and the Middle East. How are our representatives supposed to evaluate the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, like making diplomatic overtures to Iran to stabilize the region, if they don't understand even the superficial links between Iran's Shiite theocracy and the Iraqi militia led by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr?

This is parochialism and American ethnocentrism at its worst. It's the belief that Middle East history doesn't matter, that all terrorist organizations are fundamentally "the same" (they hate our freedoms, right?) and that no matter what happens, American values will triumph. It's why Vice President Cheney said that we would be "greeted as liberators" in Iraq, and it's why our military was absolutely blindsided when we weren't and when sectarian violence erupted instead.

Americans are too tolerant of ignorance in their elected officials. In 2000, then-Governor George Bush was unable to name the leaders of Chechnya, Pakistan, India or Taiwan. Instead of laughing him out of the national spotlight, we sent him to the White House. This problem has no easy solution. I can only hope that in 2009, President Barack Obama (or Hilary Clinton or Al Gore) and Secretary of State Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 can begin the long task of rebuilding a respectable, fact-based foreign policy for America. Jason Sheltzer '08 is a molecular biology major from St. Davids, Pa. He can be reached at sheltzer@princeton.edu.