Since 9/11 a lot of people have promoted themselves as “terrorism experts.” Most are not. Many of these new “terrorism experts” hail from the halls of American academia–places that frankly provide very little in the way of background for the study of terrorism. It’s as if the same bunch who got it wrong during most of the Cold War saw an opportunity in the field of terrorism and became instant experts overnight. There are a lot of problems with this phenomenon of overnight terrorism experts, not the least of which is the fact that oil-rich Gulf states such as Qatar,...