UNIVERSITIES CONTINUE TO FAIL AT THEIR MISSION.

I've filled up a weblog documenting the ways, and it's the gift that keeps on giving.

The nation’s foreign-policy and Middle East “experts” have blown it again, and academics are part of the problem. In the wake of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, many are simply silent while others are expressing surprise. Still others can’t transcend their default position of blaming America.

Let’s start with silence. What is the Middle East Studies Association up to? Its Committee on Academic Freedom is very active when it comes to writing letters to governments that restrict access to education. Where is the letter to the Taliban demanding that women be allowed to learn how to read and write and universities should remain open?

Islamophilia is a convenient pose for the academic left, as it is a way to call out others for wrongthink with respect to third world people, while it's not their spouses, daughters, or neighbors being stuffed into burqas.

Many academics are simply reluctant to say or write anything at all critical of Islam or Islamism for fear of being branded an “Islamophobe.” Amazingly, this even applies now to the Taliban. According to ABC 6 Rhode Island News, Faiz Ahmed, an associate professor of modern and Middle Eastern history at Brown University, said that “it will take more than just one side to begin recovery efforts, including the U.S. and neighboring countries as well as the Taliban to honor universal and Islamic values.” Newsflash to Ahmed: The Taliban are quite confident they are restoring Islamic values to Afghanistan after 20 years of Western influence.

Not surprisingly, Juan Cole merits mention.

Thus far, the worst of the bunch is Juan Cole, who teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. Cole calls the U.S. project in Afghanistan a Ponzi scheme. Leaving aside the weak metaphor, Cole’s faulty logic and inaccurate claims stand out. Seeking to let the Taliban off the hook for 9/11, Cole claims, “There is no reason to believe that the Taliban leadership was aware of what al-Qaeda was planning.” But it gets worse. He also believes that “not only the Taliban but many in al-Qaeda felt deeply betrayed by bin Laden’s use of their hospitality to stage a brazen attack on a superpower.” This is the kind of bad advice that academics have been giving U.S. presidents for decades.

Cole’s relativism is so pronounced that he actually wrote this sentence: “U.S. troops used flamethrowers to burn poppy crops of Afghan farmers, who had nothing else to live on. One in 7 as a result had to sell a daughter. I doubt they have forgiven the U.S.” If Cole can rationalize the idea that the men of Afghanistan had only the binary choice between growing poppies and selling their daughters, what might be going on in his classroom lectures? This statement should earn Cole a place in the bad expert advice hall of shame. Maybe Joe Biden will hire him to replace some of the others giving him equally bad advice. I suggest deer-in-the-headlights National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, or clueless Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Cole would fit right in.

The cluelessness began, dear reader, years ago when former president George W. Bush pivoted from being skeptical of nation building to installing democracies around the world.  Institutions have to be emergent to have any success.  It's unlikely that much could be done other than taking out a few terrorist leaders and destroying their training camps, then leaving with a warning not to host such people again upon pain of experiencing the full rage and power of the U.S. military.  No civilian social workers left in harm's way, and no military hardware abandoned.