“The Nutty Professor,” In Memoriam

When General Petraeus took over Iraq, he adopted many social science and human rights viewpoints into his strategy. While many of the points had harsh critics both from the military and academics, I think they can be described as an unmitigated success. I applauded him at the time, but they have worked far better than my expectations…it’s too bad that repairing the relationships between the internal factions hasn’t had the same results.

In any case, these things don’t happen by themselves and I haven’t read much about the people doing the hard work involved. Unfortunately, when we do hear about them it’s normally an obituary. Here is one piece that does both excellently.