Given the publicity surrounding the current hearings of the Homeland Security Committee, here’s a short quiz, courtesy of Juan Cole, on Saudi Arabia. Unless you have kept up with current affairs and Middle East history far more than the average American, you will be surprised at what you read and I hope far less trustful of what you hear in the mainstream media.

NPR Story on hearings

The Guardian: Peter King’s subversive fantasy

Tags: Saudi Arabia

According to Middle East scholar Helena Cobban, Obama is being briefed by a staff with precious little knowledge of Egypt or the Middle East, and the cause of such a dearth of real expertise can be traced to the Israel lobby and its success in keeping the State Department free of any experts not blindly pro-israel. Presidents (and their countries) live and die by the quality and objectivity of the advice they receive. We are in big trouble on that count. One is reminded of how McCarthy purged the State Department of its China hands in the early ’50s and thus crippled at least 4 presidents in their Far East policymaking.
Cobban:

So thorough-going has been the witch-hunt that AIPAC and its attack dogs have conducted over the past 25 years against anyone with real Middle East expertise that the U.S. government now contains no-one at the higher (or even mid-career) levels of policymaking who has any in-depth understanding of the region or of the aspirations of its people.
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So now, in the Oval Office, we have the blind leading the blind and the blind advising the blind. No Chas Freeman, no Bill Quandt, no Rob Malley... (The list of those excluded on ideological grounds is pretty long, too.) No-one, in short, who can integrate into the advice the President desperately needs to hear any real understanding of how the peoples of the region think and how the regional system actually works. God save us all from their self-inflicted ignorance.

Helena Cobban: Obama’s know-nothings discuss Egypt

Tags: Helena Cobbin