Marc, you got my sarcastic point about Petraeus, entirely. What also interests me about the guy, is that we had a couple of discussions during the conference and he seemed genuine and smart.

My point about anti-intellectuals, is that they tend to have good coping skills for one set of familiar situations. Unfortunately, they lack the imagination and desire to prepare themselves for a different set of unfamiliar situations.

In other words, being anti-intellectual discards the baby with the bath-water. While one can be overly-intellectual, and embrace new things without healthy skepticism like your Australopithecenes, most people I label as "anti-intellectual" were saying things like "They're just truck drivers, they'll never have to use their rifles" in early 2003 in Kuwait.

It is not easy to be well-read in the military, and it is not easy to have worked with your hands in academia, from what I've seen and experienced.