When a book review...

...starts off with a loaded and unsupported assumption before it even gets to the independent clause -- such as...

In an age where nuance and sensitivity in language are valued more than resoluteness on the battlefield, it is not an easy thing to praise the career of....

...then I have to stop reading the review.

It is bizarre to oppose -- which is the import of the clause -- skill with language and skill on the field.

It is doubly odd that a professor of classics, of all people, would suggest inherent conflict. Language -- especially if expressed with nuance and sensitivity -- is one of the arms of a general, Churchill and Odysseus prime examples. What the fellow might have meant is that bigots can be good generals, but that might be too obvious to point out and doesn't allow one to get in a dig at political correctness either. Now if he had said that bigots make the best generals I would have kept reading.