Sunni, schmunni - Shia, schmia

A telling op/ed piece in today's New York Times by Jeff Stein, national security editor of Congressional Quarterly.

After five years of the Global War Without End on Terror, Stein set out to ask key figures in his government if they knew the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims:

"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?

"My curiosity about our policymakers’ grasp of Islam’s two major branches was piqued in 2005, when Jon Stewart and other TV comedians made hash out of depositions, taken in a whistleblower case, in which top F.B.I. officials drew blanks when asked basic questions about Islam. One of the bemused officials was Gary Bald, then the bureau’s counterterrorism chief. Such expertise, Mr. Bald maintained, wasn’t as important as being a good manager.

"A few months later, I asked the F.B.I.’s spokesman, John Miller, about Mr. Bald’s comments. 'A leader needs to drive the organization forward,' Mr. Miller told me. 'If he is the executive in a counterterrorism operation in the post-9/11 world, he does not need to memorize the collected statements of Osama bin Laden, or be able to read Urdu to be effective. ... Playing ‘Islamic Trivial Pursuit’ was a cheap shot for the lawyers and a cheaper shot for the journalist. It’s just a gimmick.'"

"Of course, I hadn’t asked about reading Urdu or Mr. bin Laden’s writings.

"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.'

"Wrong.

"Al Qaeda? 'Sunni.'

"Right.

"AND to his credit, Mr. Hulon, a distinguished agent who is up nights worrying about Al Qaeda while we safely sleep, did at least know that the vicious struggle between Islam’s Abel and Cain was driving Iraq into civil war. But then we pay him to know things like that, the same as some members of Congress."

Stein then related his encounter with Terry Everett, a 7-term Republican Congressman and vice-chairman of the House intelligence sub-committee on technical and tactical intelligence.
Everett also didn't know Shia from Sunni:

"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.'”

Before any of us start chuckling, maybe we should ask how many of our leaders know the difference either? Maybe we should ask.