U.S. foreign policy needs to get religion, Thomas Wrigh - Washingtonpost

The national security apparatus of the U.S. government pays more attention to religion than it used to, largely through the harsh learning process of trial and error. The revival of Islamist political movements in Iran and elsewhere led the CIA to set up an office of political Islam in the mid-1980s; this office grew as the threat of violent religious extremism gathered during the 1990s.

The Defense Department rewrote the Army's counterinsurgency manual to take special account of cultural factors, including religion, as the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan wandered toward the precipice in the mid- 2000s. .... Guest Voices : U.S. foreign policy needs to get religion

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