Letters to the Editor
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Intelligence and Expertise Both Over-rated
Many pols and journalists are given far more credit for their intelligence and expertise than they deserve. McCain confusing the Sunni & Shi'a and their respective ideological and political relationships sounded like some college student who had just crammed for a final exam after a semester's worth of skipping class and got his facts confused on the essay question. I also believe that there are few journalists who are bothering to keep their facts any straighter, which makes it very easy for these kinds of factual errors not only to go unreported but to be left unnoticed for weeks. Quite frankly, if Lieberman hadn't corrected McCain (corrected him on video, more importantly), these errors most likely never would have been revealed, despite the fact that McCain had been spouting his mistakes all over the Middle East. Ignorance, laziness, bias, bigotry still play a huge role in our attitudes towards the peoples of the Middle East--a sense of "it's so hard keeping track of all these differences--and do they really matter, anyway?" a la Trent Lott. It's political and it's journalistic. In other words, I don't think McCain was purposely mis-characterizing. I think he isn't as smart as journalists and Iraq war sympathizers/rationalizers (who, themselves are lazy, ignorant and who are still willing to let other people think for them and take too much that is in dispute on faith) hope he is. Please America, do your homework this time. Reject cultural insensitivity and laziness; reject warmongers who would pretend to intelligence and expertise and the media who enable them.
And on a "given too much credit for intelligence" tangent, let me remind you all of Hillary Clinton's casting her indefensible votes: 1. The authorization for the use of force against Iraq (she didn't even read the NIE!!!) and 2. Declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.