Continuing Education for Representatives

There’s an article over at CQ.com right now featuring snippets of an interview Jeff Stein had with Silvestre Reyes, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The results of the interview are a bit disturbing:

Al Qaeda is what, I 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.

Actually, Al Qaeda is only Sunni. As Mr. Stein puts it: “if a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.” This is a key bit of information to know in order to understand the global battle with terrorism. In fact, as one small example, there was talk of reprisal from Al Qaeda after Hezbollah’s (Shiite) “success” in Lebanon. Why would there be a reprisal for actions that both groups would agree on? As Bernard Haykel wrote in his article “The Enemy of my Enemy is Still my Enemy”:

"[T]he rise of Hezbollah makes it all the more likely that Al Qaeda will soon seek to reassert itself through increased attacks on Shiites in Iraq and on Westerners all over the world — whatever it needs to do in order to regain the title of true defender of Islam."

I suppose these intricacies wouldn’t matter, though, because when asked about Hezbollah, Reyes replied:

“Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah...”

He laughed again, shifting in his seat.

I’m not writing this to claim superiority or to denigrate Representative Reyes. I’m sure there are many, many issues that Reyes is very familiar with, certainly more than me, and probably more than most of us, however if you are a Representative coming in as chairman of the Intelligence Committee, these are the types of things you should know. It’s a sad state of affairs that our representatives are so clueless on what is so often called the “defining issue of our time.” How can educated decisions be made about how to handle these global struggles without the proper information? Perhaps they should teach night classes over on Capitol Hill.