Gates, to his credit, is much more interested than Rumsfeld was in mobilizing the human sciences in the “war on terror.”
Much more at Foreign Policy...... But the tragedy of his initiative is that the very thing that makes it so appealing—at last, the Pentagon is seeking expert input from the academy—could also doom it to failure.
If American policymakers get the answers to these questions wrong, the people in the region will surely suffer, and more Americans will die unnecessarily—be it in more Middle Eastern wars, in future 9/11s, or both.
“So what?” you might ask. Isn’t that their problem? Graham Spanier, the president of Pennsylvania State University and a Minerva booster, recently told the New York Times that scholars who oppose Pentagon funding simply “shouldn’t apply.” This glib sentiment has an obvious appeal, but U.S. policymakers would be well advised to think hard before taking Spanier’s advice.
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