ROBERT KAGAN alerta sobre el error, que estamos viendo constantemente y sobre el que he escrito en varias ocasiones, de presentar a los musulmanes chiítas como una fuerza monolítica ultrarreligiosa vinculada a la teocracia iraní:

[B]ack in 1977, [...] a standard critique of American Cold War policies was that policymakers held a simplistic, monolithic view of communism. Not all communists were stooges of the Soviet Union, as China and Yugoslavia demonstrated. And not all national liberation movements were led by communists. More often, they were led by nationalists. Then there was the whole kaleidoscope of the global left: the socialists, the euro-communists, the trade union leaders, the advocates of a "third way" between East and West. It was a mistake to lump them all together as "communists."

This was generally a liberal critique of conservative anti-communist rigidity. Conservative Cold Warriors were always crying "Communist!" and thus missed opportunities that came from making more subtle distinctions. And the critique was not without merit.

[...] Compare liberal and journalistic open-mindedness during the Cold War, when the subject was communism, with the remarkable rigidity from these same quarters today when it comes to a very different group of people: Shiite Muslims.

De cabo a rabo.