More on the Trouble at the War College
By Thomas Ricks has a bit more on academic freedom at the Army War College. Ricks quotes Mark Perry:
It’s worse than you think. They have curtailed the curriculum so that their students are not exposed to radical Islam. Akin to denying students access to Marx during the Cold War….
I was a part of a three day seminar for military public affairs experts. All of them wondered why they were having difficulty “telling the good story of what we are doing in Iraq.” It was a tension filled three days. I was one of seven “SMEs” — subject matter experts. I was brought in as an expert on Hamas and Hezbollah. My role was to review why the Israeli public affairs people had had problems “selling” the August 2006 war against Hezbollah to the world community. I remember during the plenary session I was one of several “interventions” (as they are called) and told them: “You can’t sell an Edsel.” It was clear immediately that there were people in uniform present who were very upset that I was invited. And after the three days it was also clear that (at least for some few senior ranking officers) that my expertise was not welcome — and not wanted. I concluded that it was not simply faculty independence that was and is a problem, but freedom of expression.
This does not sound like Rumsfeld and the civilians at the Pentagon having a temper tantrum about critiques emanating from the Institute for Strategic Studies. Indeed, this sounds much worse; uniformed personnel not wanting to hear disquieting arguments about the enemy. I’m forced to wonder whether there’s a Christianist aspect to this; the unfortunate influence of evangelical Christians in the Air Force has been documented, but I hadn’t heard similar arguments about the Army, William Boykin aside. I’m not sure I can grasp another reason for refusing to read radical Islamic texts.
…to push back a little against the comments, I should explain that I’ve interacted with quite a few Army officers, both senior and junior, and I’ve found that while they do skew conservative, Southern, Protestant, etc., they are also almost uniformly thoughtful, intelligent, and serious about their work. It’s because I find it difficult to imagine such officers refusing to read “radical” Islamic texts that I expressed the surprise in this post; it doesn’t seem like any officers I’ve met to refuse to read something by or about the enemy. Rumsfeld’s nutcase Pentagon civilians, yes; uniformed officers, no. The same goes for the Navy and even (though I pick on them) the Air Force. Indeed, it would surprise me that even committed evangelical Christians would refuse to read such texts, which I was I used the term “forced to wonder” rather than suggesting more clearly that such was the case.