A Failure of Imagination

Why our kids' education needs to be broad and deep:

[Regarding U.S. failure to predict the 9-11 attacks] The commission concluded that "it was a failure of imagina­tion."[xiii] In the final analysis, the bipartisan group reasoned that as Ameri­cans, we failed to imagine such a thing happening, and so could not fathom it even as it happened. After hearing this conclusion during the prebriefing on the commission's findings, I exclaimed, "Yes, it was a failure of imagina­tion, but it was caused by a failure of education."

A failure of education, he says.

Had we been educated, our imagination would have been wider and greater. Had we been taught what jihad was, we could have predicted its drive. Had we been warned about jihadism, we could have devised a resistance to it. Had we been informed when the war first started, we could have defended ourselves thereafter. Education failed the public and the government.

From an excerpt of the book Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies in America by Walid Phares, a Lebanese-born teacher, speaker and advisor on Global Strategies. Emphasis mine.