"Poquito"

An interview with Silvestre Reyes, Texas Democrat and the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, by Jeff Stein of CQ.com, shows Reyes is a little ... um ... lacking when it comes to the facts about the Middle East. Reyes, who has been on the House Intelligence Committee for the past six years, did not know that al qaeda is a Sunni organization and seems never to have heard of Hezbollah.

And Hezbollah? I asked him. What are they?

“Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah...”

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....

He laughed again, shifting in his seat.

“Why do you ask me these questions at five o’clock? Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?”

“Poquito,” I said—a little.

“Poquito?! “ He laughed again.

“Go ahead,” I said, talk to me about Sunnis and Shia in Spanish.

Reyes: “Well, I, uh....”

In the interest of bipartisanship, Stein does share the following anecdote illustrative of extreme ignorance on the other side of the aisle...

Trent Lott, the veteran Republican senator from Mississippi, said only last September that “It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people.”

“Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion?” wondered Lott, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after a meeting with Bush.

“Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?

“They all look the same to me,” Lott said.

There were some weirdnesses in the interview on the part of Mr. Stein, to be sure, in particular certain pedantic ejaculations like the following:

I apologized for putting him “on the spot a little.” But I reminded him that the people who have killed thousands of Americans on U.S. soil and in the Middle East have been front page news for a long time now.

It’s been 23 years since a Hezbollah suicide bomber killed over 200 U.S. military personnel in Beirut, mostly Marines.

Hezbollah, a creature of Iran, is close to taking over in Lebanon. Reports say they are helping train Iraqi Shiites to kill Sunnis in the spiralling civil war.

Calling Hezbollah "a creature of Iran" is in itself either ignorant or at the least disingenuous (Tony Karon is excellent on the secular nationalism at the root of Hizballah.) ... and yes I know that I'm spelling Hezbollah/Hizballah two different ways here.

But hey, Stein writes for a mainstream Washington audience. Talking about the Middle East in terms of "the people who have killed thousands of Americans on U.S. soil and in the Middle East" (without mentioning the hundreds of thousands--or more--killed by Americans on "Middle Eastern soil"--what is it with the soil with these people?) is pretty much just the way people talk in Washington.

But of course Stein's main point, that the incoming head of the Intel Committee should know a few basic facts about a focal region (for better or worse) of U.S. foreign policy, is of course correct and more than a little disturbing.