Abu Muqawama: Post
Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS.
Political Economy of the Middle East
So a typical cycle for this blogger is to get annoyed by some criticism, write something snarky and mischievous, and then get all Presbyterian about it and feel guilty for having written something snarky and mischievous. I wrote something snarky and mischievous about Dan Drezner yesterday and now feel kinda bad about it because it's really not cricket to write such things. And since I don't really know the guy and can't apologize directly, allow me to both reference what I wrote and honor his particular field of research by recommending a brief reading list on the political economy of the Middle East. (I'm not sure if Drezner would define himself as a political economist, actually, but close enough.) When I was a graduate student at the American University of Beirut, the Department of Political Science there was briefly blessed with two of the finest political economists to have worked on the Middle East in recent memory. The first was then-president of AUB, John Waterbury, and the second was a mentor of mine named Yahya Sadowski. The key thing about both of these guys is that they are both first-class political scientists specializing in political economy who have also spent decades in the Middle East living and researching. This allows them to write with both rigor and intimacy with their subject matter. Accordingly, if you're looking to start some research on the subject, you could do a lot worse than:
Waterbury's (with Richards) A Political Economy of the Middle East: Third Edition
and
Sadowski's Scuds or Butter?: The Political Economy of Arms Control in the Middle East
Okay, I feel better now for having done that. I'll be gone for a week or so, so allow those books to tide you over. What will I be reading while I'm gone? Why, none other than my main man Hein Goemans
I identify with the Scots-Irish Presbyterian inner need to go back and apologize...makes you who you are.
One of the first questions I ask when I see a quantitative analysis of a complex subject like war is whether there is sufficient sample support to support the statistical analysis. For example, not being familiar with Hein Goemans's War and Punishment, I took a quick look through the wonderfulness of Google books and say the chapter, "Large N: The Fate of Leaders and the Duration of War."
Large N is a bugaboo because of the curse of dimensionality -- the complexity in the way N things can interact ranges from N to N^2 to factorial N to 2^N, and this can spell disaster for meaningful statistical analysis when you've got a fixed observation or sample size along with a finite budget and timeline.
Though "very few squad leaders in the 10th Mountain Division have ever taken a course in statistics," the number that have taken a course in statistics AND group theory AND representation theory is probably zero, but these are the tools that you need to assess data sets like this. This may seem like a tangent, but trust me, it's highly relevant from everything from the recent quant discussion to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's mistake about factorials in his TED lecture to the unfair 1970 draft in which people born in earlier months were nearly twice as likely to get drafted as people born later in the year. (See Fienberg, "Randomization and Social Affairs: The 1970 Draft Lottery." Science 171, 255-261, 1971.) Oops—it's tough to get statistics and probability correct, especially when it takes place in really complicated spaces.
There's an absolutely beautiful monograph by Persi Diaconis called "Group Representations in Probability and Statistics" that discusses these issues, like the problems associated with large N and the 1970 draft data example. Diaconis:
"It is worth pointing to a common problem not represented in the [permutation] data. Because n! grows so rapidly, one can have a fairly large data set of rankings and still only have a small proportion of the possible orders represented. For example, … in another data set, quoted in Feigin and Cohen (1978), 148 people ranked 10 occupations for desirability. Clearly, the ratio of the sample size to n! has a limiting effect on what kind of models can be fit to the data."
Diaconis is being coy here, but as BdM points out at TED, 10! = 3628800, and any attempt to draw meaningful statistical conclusions about a set of millions from 148 samples is laughably obtuse and futile. I was happy to see that Goemans breaks his problem down into 8 possibilities using a observation size of 215 that gets cut down to 69. Even so, given the widely disparate historical data which is all we've got, it's fair to ask if these statistics are sufficient.
Later in his monograph, Diaconis also provides a funny story from the physical sciences that should serve as a warning for people who would dismiss out-of-hand quantitative analysis that they don't understand. The story involves R.A. Fisher, the Creator God of the statistical sciences, and the proof of Wegener's Theory of continental drift, in which Fisher played an important role in the 1950s, and a really nasty academic dispute with geophysicist/Bayesian statistician Harold Jeffreys:
"I cannot resist reporting some background on Fisher's motivation for working with the distribution discussed above. This story was told to me in 1984 by the geologist Colin B. B. Bull. Dr. Bull was a student in Cambridge in the early 1950's. One day he ran across the street in haste and knocked an old man off a bicycle! The old man seemed dazed. When asked where he was bound he replied "India." It turned out to be R. A. Fisher who was meeting a train enroute to a visit to the Indian Statistical Institute. A month later, Bull met Fisher at Cambridge and again apologized. Fisher asked what area Bull worked in. Bull explained that a group of geologists was trying to test Wegener's theory of continental drift. Wegener had postulated that our current continents used to nest together. He tested this by looking at the distribution of a wide variety of bird, animal and plant life - arguing that matching points had close distributions.
"Geologists found themselves far afield in trying to really understand Wegener's arguments. They searched for data that were closer to geology. They had hit on the distribution of magnetization angle in rocks. This gave points naturally distributed on the sphere. They had two distributions (from matching points on two continents) and wanted to test if the distributions were the same.
"Fisher took a surprisingly keen interest in the problem and set out to learn the relevant geology. In addition to writing his famous paper (which showed the distributions were different) he gave a series of talks at the geology department to make sure he'd got it right. Bull told me these were very clear, and remarkable for the depth Fisher showed after a few months study.
"Why did Fisher take such a keen interest? A large part of the answer may lie in Fisher's ongoing war with Harold Jeffries [sic]. They had been rudely battling for at least 30 years over the foundations of statistics. Jeffries has never really accepted (as of 1987!) continental drift. It is scarcely mentioned in Jeffries' book on geophysics. Fisher presumably had some extra-curricular motivation."
Long story short: you don't want to be the Harold Jeffreys in this story.
to Sadowski's web page compendium of middle east stuff? Is it still around the interwebs?
Why are you still blogging?
Every time you write these kind of posts you alienate people that you probably don't want to alienate. You are a relatively indistinguished grad student who has little serious academic research to his name. Insulting established leaders in the field that you don't even know is probably not the smartest idea.
I don't know what kind of advice you're getting from your "mentors" at CNAS, but continously alienating people with these kinds of blog posts doesn't seem very smart for your long-term career prospects, especially if you want to go into academia.
Visitor 5.48: It may be inconcievable to you, but I suspect mr. Exum isnt that interested in becoming the second Henry Kissinger.
You're both dorks.
Visitor on March 10, 2010 - 5:48am
Last I knew this was a free country and if Mr. Exum wants to write about anything on this website, there is a clause up at the top that says: "Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS."
Every-time he hits the post comment button, he knows what he is doing. Perhaps, he's a little rash in what he writes about sometimes, but we all learn from our mistakes. Also, sometimes people need to use a sledgehammer to make others listen. On that note, in the immortal words of Max Yasgur, "you can go pound salt up your ass".
If Daniel Drezner was pro DADT before, he'll surely be against it after I'm through with this bitch of a man. He'll exchange his bottle of Listerine for my jiz and gargle with some yellowish (sometimes reddish brown) sticky cum, and he'll love it.
Wow, what a commentariat. Drezler provides a good voice in my opinion, though I disagree with him on some points.
On a different note, and even on topic, has anyone done any quant on the Israel position? And did anyone notice Biden getting bitch-slapped in the country-who-shall-not-be-named?
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/rosner/entry/biden_s_condemnation
Sarah Palin is the true president of the US over there.
Yeah that announcement was definitely a slap in the face. Although i find it interesting that the press is reporting that the decision to announce the approval for those homes was made with Bibi's knowledge.
So perhaps, it was a slap in the face directed to Bibi?
I suggest to the proprietor of this blog that he immediately begin a Delete Upon Detection (D.U.D.) policy for offensive comments like the ones posted on this thread. No warnings, no explanations. Just get rid of them. By taking prompt action now he'll be saving himself a lot of trouble later.
Censorship is un-American.
Sodomy and Male Love are common in the Near East. Students of Muslims and Islam should have a stomach for this subject, especially Dan Drezner who only studies theories and books. Welcome to the Middle East.
?
(Sorry that this doesn't contain additional references to Daniel Drezner.)
Dan Drezner is an avid snorkeler--and I don't mean in the sea. Go Navy!
There must be fifty ways to block your gay spammer:
iptables -A INPUT -s 65.55.44.100 -j DROPIPSeccmd.exe -f [*=0:PortNumber:Protocol]sudo ipfw deny ip from BAD_IP to 67.192.225.242OK you got me!
:-)
Hein.
We're not worthy! We're not worthy!
Everyone's so gay on here.
Silly rabbit commentators. Go play internet porn games somewhere else, would yah? You're only revealing... what? Suppressed inner longings? Larry Craig in the men's bathroom at the Republican Convention? Or was that Bob Allen? Or Karl Rove? Or is that Karl Rohm? Look it up, it's a fun history topic - the Night of the Long Knives, when the neocons eat their own... what a spectacle.
In any case, the ridiculous BS put out by quants in economics and geostrategic and military policy is finally being revealed for what it is: propaganda designed to justify entirely separate agendas as "scientifically rational policy" - it's a big fat load of bull.
Just think: the doctors of kings in centuries past relied on astrology, bloodletting and stool analysis. You really think that there aren't a few things in academics today that aren't similarly ridiculous?
Like trying to use mathematical models to predict human behavior, say?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/opinion/3438978/Aussie-view-Don-t-feel-shee...
Based on what happened to Eric Massa (D-NY) - who is the hapless peasant in "A piece of String" by Guy DeMaupassant, I reverse on DADT.
Get rid of it quietly but get rid of it. LGB OK.
Now it would be wise BTW to not have mandatory sensitivity training conducted by Comrade Commisar Megaphone, NCOIC of I don't want to face the music that goes *bang* busy work detachment.
But I'm sure wise remains out of season.
I wonder if Beck and Limbaugh, Hannity realize that they just shut off any potential Dem Defectors -- before victory - and may have turned No votes into Yes.
And yes they are stupid bigots.
Here's a ridiculous story on the political economy of the Middle East:
abcnews.go.com/Politics/Afghanistan/silver-star-winner-capt-matthew-myer-reprimanded-attack
Three Army officers have received letters of reprimand for failing to prepare adequate defenses for a combat outpost in Wanat, Afghanistan, where a mass Taliban attack in July 2008 resulted in the deaths of nine soldiers and 27 wounded, Defense Department officials confirmed to ABC News.
Apparently the officers at the forward outpost in Afghanistan are being reprimanded for not constructing adequate defenses - but were they given adequate resources to construct those defenses? I've seen plenty of reports on shoddy equipment being trucked in under bogus military contracts. Why isn't this more widely known?
www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-june-17-2008/lara-logan
Logan: "If I were to watch the news that you're hearing in the United States, I'd just blow my brains out, because it would drive me nuts... and the soldiers do feel forgotten."
U.S. General Tells 60 Minutes More Soldiers And Assets Needed To Defeat Enemy
The quartermasters and their crony buddies in the private sector are the ones who deserve reprimands and canceled contracts (plus say a five-year ban on receiving ANY government contracts - that'd clean up that dirty business, wouldn't it?).
They are still trying to cover their asses with bogus political moves designed to halt any outside audit agency from being established, though:
Watchdog Says Defense Contract Audit Agency Resisting Meaningful Reform
March 2, 2010
The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) sent a letter today to Senate committees urging them to continue to conduct oversight over the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), warning the committees that they feared that the reforms occurring at the agency were only superficial responses to political pressure.
The letter, based on concerns several DCAA auditors brought to POGO, focuses on whether DCAA is meaningfully addressing human capital management challenges that the Government Accountability Office found had a "detrimental effect on audit quality." In particular, the group cites DCAA headquarters' stonewalling a grassroots group established within the agency to analyze the promotion system as a possible indication that DCAA headquarters is not committed to fixing the agency's problems....
http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/alerts/contract-oversight/co-ca-20100302.html
g.d.: You remember the story of the chinese chainsaws that were issued to clear brush? Fell apart after 2 hours?
Damn, Hillary Clinton just pwned Benjamin Nethanyahu...
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1156063.html
@Fnord,
That's not going to hurt Bibi. Really. Or help Bammy with Israel or the "Lobby" or Jewish voters.
On Chinese Chainsaws: yeah, I'd rather they bought AK's. Once again, this is one of millions of reasons we don't trust our govt.
Can't wait until they're running healthcare. Lemme see, we'll get taxed for 4 years then we start to get the "benefits"....of standing in a much longer line at the Emergency Room.
OMG, some comments on here reflect a rather challenged IQ level. You don't need contact lenses http://www.acuvueoasys.us to realise some of the verbal abuse is evidence the posters cant articulate their arguments civily.
This thread makes me so horny.
A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.
We're not worthy! We're not worthy!
Abu M, your argument against not policing ur comment section as presented at zenpundit are getting weaker and weaker. There is no way to outlast a stalker.
Oh, and Elf, I think even Nethanyahu will pause a bit before going up against Petraeus and Mullen...
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/14/the_petraeus_briefing_...
Fnord, from what I see Bibi is a bit in the middle, getting squeezed by his own.
It's really about the nukes in Iran, Fnord. Expect more irrationality to pop out here and there.
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