Bravo, David, for your robust demolition of anthropologist Roberto Gonzalez’s doctrinaire opposition to General Petraeus’s implanting of social scientists within our combat forces in Iraq. I suspect there are many among us who would be interested in learning more about your tour of duty there.

This salvo by Gonzalez and his ilk, part of a long campaign to de-legitimize any use of military force in our defense, is like so many that preceded it: blatantly one-sided and simplistic–quintessentially unacademic–in its treatment of the complex reality of war and peace.

But of course these “professional” anti-war, and anti-anti-terrorist academics are not interested in, for example, what David describes as the ”real-world impact” of the U.S. effort to ameliorate the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Nor can these academics be bothered to give real-world, disinterested consideration to a brutal, Gestapo-like, religiously fanatic enemy; traditional just-war arguments; and social scientists’ ability to help in the humane distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants. And much less do they seem concerned with helping to protect our soldiers and actually winning the war on Islamotyranny.

Such academics have, rather, long ago pre-judged and, to great harm, slanted these issues. One example, regarding the widely used text in the field of so-called peace studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, comes to mind. As noted in “Indoctrination or Education?” the authors of the book have no qualms about proclaiming: ”The field [of Peace Studies] differs from most other human sciences in that it is value-oriented, and unabashedly so . . . [our values] are frankly anti-war, anti-violence, anti-nuclear, anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, pro-environment, pro-human rights, pro-social justice, pro-peace and poltically progressive.”

It is dangerous for us to allow these ideologues to obscure the real world. May more academics, like those now participating in the Petraeus initiative, come forth to participate in our defense.