Institutionalized ignorance

It was one year ago that I read a piece by Jeff Stein in The New York Times about his interviews with top U.S. officials yielding how pitifully ignorant the people in charge of our national security are.\nIn 2005, the spokesman for the FBI did not know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. He went further to proclaim that it didn’t really matter; his managerial skills were more important, anyway. In 2006, Stein asked the new chief of the agency’s national security branch Willie Hulon if he knew the difference. His answer was vague: “The basics goes back to their beliefs and who they were following.”\nHe then proceeded to state that Iran and Hezbollah were Sunni. (That’s incorrect, in case you can’t tell.)\nIf you don’t understand why you should be concerned by these statements, then I would question your place in higher education. \nThe United States is occupying two Muslim nations, Afghanistan and Iraq. In the latter country, a good number of Sunnis and Shiites seem bent on obliterating each other, and plenty of innocent people as well as coalition troops are caught in the middle. The fact that policy makers, officials and war hawks know nothing about the contexts in which these “wars” are being fought is disturbing enough. \nAdd to that President Bush’s rhetoric about winning the hearts and minds of the people, and it becomes laughable hypocrisy. \nPerhaps the administration is realizing its stupidity, because the Pentagon has decided to send a “Human Terrain Team” consisting of anthropologists and other social scientists into Afghanistan alongside a combat unit. \nThe logic is that these experts can help American forces better understand aspects of local society and address problems that may eventually turn into security issues. \nOne success story from the preliminary stages of the project consisted of how an anthropologist picked up on a tribal dispute that was allowing the Taliban to bully one of the tribes. \nI have to ask, though, what took so long for the government to realize that when you plan on invading and occupying a foreign country (another issue altogether) that it would be idiotic to do so without any understanding of that country’s culture, traditions, political issues and economic concerns? \nIt shouldn’t take more than five years to realize that force alone doesn’t win “hearts and minds” – or wars, for that matter. \nIt shouldn’t take an anthropologist to teach people the most basic of facts. \nCome on guys, two-and-half minutes on Google will tell you the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. \nCol. Martin Schweitzer, whose unit works with anthropologists in Afghanistan, was quoted on video praising the program, stating “in ’02 we used to kick in doors. In ’07 the Afghan Police or Afghan Army knock on the door and request to come in.” \nI wonder what special breed of idiots need anthropologists to tell them that the locals cooperate with your questioning better if you knock on the door rather than kick it in?