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As you know, I’ve been engaging in conference calls the last few days with the handful of congress-people who seek to lead the Republicans out of the darkness in the 110^th Congress. Over at NZ Bear’s site, the furry one has compiled a list of questions that blog readers wanted posed to the ladder-climbing reps. One of the most interesting, and least tendentious, was the following:

What books have you read about Islamic terrorism against America and the West?

I wanted to ask this question at the conference calls, and have done so three times (so far). I want to make clear that I didn’t want to ask the question to capture any of the representatives in a “gotcha” moment. Here in Boston, we have a local TV newscaster by the name of Andy Hiller who every four years delights in cornering a presidential candidate and asking him something like who’s the Director of Intelligence in Pakistan. When the candidate stumbles or evades, Hiller struts around like a peacock. I’ve always felt this shtick makes him more closely resemble an ass, but that’s just one man’s opinion.

I wanted to ask this question to gauge how much our leading congressmen are doing to get themselves up to speed on the most seminal issue of the day. Because the goal wasn’t to embarrass anyone, I won’t name names in this post, although if you’re really interested you can go to the audiotapes which are somewhere out there on the web and check it out for yourself.

FIRST, THE BAD NEWS. Not a single candidate was able to mention a specific book. The one candidate who tried created inadvertent hilarity by saying, “Gosh, I have a book in my draw. ‘Jihad’ or something like that.” That representative then apologized but quickly recovered a sheen of omniscience by reminding us all that he/she has spoken to constituents who have served in Iraq, and through these conversation she has learned a lot.

This rep’s answer wasn’t even the worst. One of the other congresspeople said that he/she hadn’t read any books on the topic, but then trumped any knowledge we book-readers might get by reminding us that he/she receives information from classified intelligence briefings!

This answer was unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. First of all, as we learned a few weeks ago, many of the highest ranking members of our intelligence agencies don’t know the difference between a Shia and a Sunni. Second, there is a prevailing sentiment amongst many CIA-types that if Israel would just have the common decency to erase itself from the map, then it would be kumbaya-time for the West and the Islamic world. In addition to being morally abhorrent, this view is also grossly ignorant. The forces of radical Islam have never been so modest as to limit their goals to Israel’s annihilation. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to listen to them.

Lastly, I can’t imagine these alleged classified briefings go into great detail regarding the last couple of centuries of Islam and the birthing of Radical Islam. There is nothing in Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower” or Walid Phares’ “Future Jihad” that is classified. I’m not entirely comforted by the notion that our congress-people are depending on the CIA and FBI to teach them their history.

The third congressperson who I posed the question to also didn’t mention a specific book. He did, however, talk some good talk about Radical Islam and the danger that it represents. Happily, he didn’t shy away from the politically incorrect stance of actually using the word “Islam” when discussing Radical Islam. So if we were grading on a curve, he’d get an A.

BUT I DON’T GRADE ON A CURVE. I find it almost inconceivable that our most highly ranking elected officials are so intellectually incurious that they haven’t bothered getting themselves up to speed on the most pressing issue of our day.

The name Newt Gingrich has come up a lot during these conference calls. Whatever Gingrich’s faults were, he was a creative and active thinker. Most of the congressmen have gone out of their way to praise Newt and his legacy. Somehow I don’t see Newt educating himself on the most important issue of our time by merely consuming the spoon-feedings doled out by the known incompetents who populate our intelligence agencies.

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