US Killed Over 1,500 Afghan Civilians in 10 Months

[BarakzaiAbdali]

In fact, the Canadian Army took note of his book and engaged him a vociferous debate that started here:

http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/caj/doc...l11.2_24_e.pdf

They claimed he had not referenced incidents in Afghanistan and he had. Even they had to concede:

"It does not include evidence from Afghanistan. Only one of the arguments about the patterns is valid. The evidence corroborates Pape’s claim about the use of organized campaigns. This is logical, as the “systems” required to recruit and indoctrinate suicide bombers, to equip them, and plan and organize their actions, takes time, consideration and effort to develop."

[BarakzaiAbdali]

The ironic thing is that the Candians referenced the back and forths where Pape basically smacked the crap out of the air force lackies attempting to question the veracity of his data. Yet while discussing the seminal work dying to win, they were actually referencing the debates Pape had over Bombing to Win. That latter work came first and was a discussion of the use of AIR POWER in war and had nothing at all to do with suicide bombing missions.

Here is Pape's exquisite rebuttal:

http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/faculty/ha...ecStud9798.pdf

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Finally, in regard to Pape's successfull thrashing of other critics left stunned by his rejoinders, here you go:

"In a criticism of Pape's link between occupation and suicide terrorism, an article titled "Design, Inference, and the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" (published in The American Political Science Review), authors Scott Ashworth, Joshua D. Clinton, Adam Meirowitz, and Kristopher W. Ramsay from Princeton charged Pape with "sampling on the dependent variable" by limiting research only to cases in which suicide terror was used.[6] In response, Pape argues that his research design is sufficient because it collected the universe of known cases of suicide terrorism.[7] In a rejoinder, Ashworth et al. discuss how even large samples of the dependent variable cannot be used to explain variation in outcomes, why suicide terrorism in some places but not others, if the sample does not vary.[8] In reply, Pape notes that Chapter 6 of Dying to Win does collect and analyze data beyond suicide terrorism, which strongly confirms the original hypothesis."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pape

Since this response regarding chapter 6... there has been stunning silence from the Princeton group my friend. So I look forward to your rebuttal to Pape's work.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Finally, link to 1 of the rejoinders:

http://www.princeton.edu/~kramsay/Si...ape-respon.pdf

So I look forward to your critique of Dying to Win. As a mathmetician, I am sure you could provide some insight.

Until then, the Taliban insurgency (actually a collection of insurgent groups at this time) appears to be functioning as a legitimate anti occupation resistance based on the evidence.

The jurisprudence behind the tactic is not something I agree with on a personal disdain level, but Qardawi is no wahhabite and nor is he a concrete non spiritual individual. He is a weighty personality in jurisprudence today and has not been the subject of attacks relating to regime preference or wahabism as Bin Baaz has.

[ScimitarXEdge]

Wrong, thats a negligent statement. Pape is an authority on the matter. In fact he is the authority.

Logical Fallacies» Appeal to Authority

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Logical Fallacies» Appeal to Authority

That would be the case if the initial argument merely relied on name dropping. Instead, it relies on your inability to to A) answer Paype's evidence irrespective of who he is and B) logic label your way out of this conundrum you got yourself into. And it relied on your attempt to claim he had no references or was a pointless reference. Authority is very valid when the authority does pristine work. Hence, why you cannot be referred to as an authority on this subject; your contentions all run into each other and are non evidence based.

As I said, until you answer clearly and deal with the contentions, we can begin to gloss over your conclusions.

Regarding his data collection:

"First, the article did not sample suicide terrorism, but

collected the universe of suicide terrorist attacks worldwide
from 1980 through 2001. It is the first database of
its kind; United States, British, and Israeli officials tell
me that they do not have comparably complete data.
There is no such thing as sample bias in collecting a

universe."

http://www.princeton.edu/~kramsay/Si...ape-respon.pdf

[thetruth]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MK04Df02.html