Dean Barnett isn't impressed by the insights or even the studiousness of our intelligence services. It's been his observation that "Anything that happened in the Islamic world was by definition a reaction to something America or the West did. They had no understanding of our enemy and, more damningly, zero comprehension that they had to get one. Fast."
He writes further:
IN TODAY’S NEW YORK TIMES of all places, my well-founded skepticism has been validated. Jeff Stein, the national security editor at Congressional Quarterly, writes how he’s made a habit in recent years of concluding interviews with government officials by asking them if they know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. The results have been uniformly dismaying if not surprising. A sample:
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.
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.
Jeff Stein also interviewed individuals on the House intelligence subcommittee who likewise were ignorant of the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. Is this dismaying, or what?!