Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise. --- Lewis Carroll

INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS



This 8th article in the long-running buggy series on Robert Pape's Dying to Win is something of an interlude, although an important one. It responds to some requests sent by buggy visitors asking that prof bug, to the extent possible, lay out and analyze what he thinks are the underlying ideological beliefs and convictions that have motivated Pape's arguments and theoretical work in his book. Happy to respond here to those requests.

But note. To do so at this point is to interrupt the logical order of the current buggy series --- which has been probing Pape's efforts to test the soundness of his nationalist theory of suicide terrorism by statistical means (logit modeling), a task that has already required a good 4 buggy articles. No matter. The requests make sense; they deal with a weighty topic; and they deserve a response. Then, too, what harm can ensue if we hold off a few days before plunging back into the miasmic depths of Pape's statistical marshland? None, no? On the flip-side, there are lots of solid reasons to peek into the dark mental basement and sub-structures that underpin Pape's worldview and theoretical understanding of international life . . . just as they do, it's clear enough, his current whitewash job of Islamist extremism and the ways in which it has held a near monopoly-role in the outbreak of suicide terrorism since 1980.

Just to clarify in passing for the umpteenth time, note how silly and stupefying that Pape apologia is:

• Even in his own very flawed table 1 on p. 15 of Dying to Win, that Islamist dominance emerges with clarity despite his efforts --- highlighted in the previous buggy article --- to conceal its blatant pre-eminence with a tricked-up presentation of the data. For the make-believe Pape table --- with its remarkably flawed data and mirror-illusion presentation that conceals the dominant role of Islamic groups in suicide terrorism --- click here for comparison .

• Specifically, once his mirror-tricks are grasped and ignored --- (see the corrected Pape table that follows in a moment or two) --- you find that a good 13 of the 15 suicide terrorist groups active in the world between 1980 and the end of 2003 were Islamic. (These numbers and the percentages, note quickly, include four unnamed Islamic terrorist groups attacking Israel not referred to by Pape anywhere in the table: Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Forces of Palestinian Popular Resistance; and a fifth --- yes, only one overall Islamic group on a very very conservative count by prof bug --- for "Iraqi" rebels, whose religion Pape claims to be in the dark about, the poor fellow . . . though he is very certain that the death-dealing Kaboomers are all Iraqis.)

One of the non-Islamic groups, the Sikhs in India, carried out a total of 1 suicide attack. Yes, exactly 1; no more. And the other--- the kill-crazy Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, led (in Pape-speak) by altruistic freedom-fighting nationalists --- happen to operate in near-identical ways to a fanatical religious cult . . . not that Pape's later mirror-tricks in chapters 8, 9, and 10 would ever let unsuspecting readers know that. Even then, despite the intervention of the Indian army on the side of the Tamil Tigers' enemy --- the government of Sri Lanka --- the Tamil Tigers have never carried out a suicide or any terrorist attack on Indian soil . . . this, mind you, even though there are Tamil-related ethnic Hindus in southern India itself. (For a much more profound, up-front analysis by a specialist on the region and ethnic conflict there, see Michael Roberts, "Tamil Tiger "Martyrs": Regenerating Divine Potency? Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, (Nov-Dec 2005), pp. 493-514. Not yet available online.)

• In short, even in Pape's bleached, excuse-making data-set, Islamic suicide terrorist groups amount to 88% of the total ---13/15.

• Add in the proper number of such suicide terrorist groups operating between 1980 and 2003 ---21 more, all Islamist --- and the percentage rises to 34 of 36 or 94.4%. The buggy table that catches all 210 of these Islamist groups, including double-counting of Hezbollah and GIA (Algeria) when they attacked civilians or tried to in two different countries each, is also reproduced just below. By contrast, though suicide terrorist attacks were launched against China in 2002 and Turkey in 2003 --- most likely by radical Islamist groups --- prof bug excluded them from the table, not being able to pin down the groups' identities with certainty.

   

Corrected Tables Added /2005

"Can you do addition?" the White Queen asked. "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?" "I don't know," said Alice. "I lost count." --- Lewis Carroll

With, surprisingly, some free-time on his hands, prof bug now offers a corrective of Pape's extravagantly error-riddled data-set for suicide terrorist groups active between 1980 and 2003.



SUICIDE TERRORIST GROUPS OMITTED BY PAPE, ALL ISLAMIC

Date	Terrorists	Religion	Target Country	#Attacks	#Killed & Wounded
1982?	MKO, Iranian Mujadeen*	Islamic/Marxist	Iran	2	dozens killed
1994	MKO	Islamic/Marxist	Iran	1	hundreds
1981	Egyptian Islamic Jihad	Islamist	Egypt	1	1 k (Pres Sadat); 12 w
1983	El-Dawa	Islamist	Kuwait	1	?
1985	El-Dawa	Islamist	Kuwait	1	?
1995	Egyptian Islamic Jihad	Islamist	Pakistan	1	16k; 60 w
1992	Hezbollah	Islamist	Argentina	1	29 k; 242 w
1994	Hezbollah	Islamist	Argentina	1	85 k; 300 w
1994	Anser Allah	Islamist	Panama	1	21 k;
1995	GIA: Armed Islamic Group (Algeria)	Islamist	Algeria	1	42 k; 265 w
1994	GIA	Islamist	France	1	aborted plane bombing of Eiffel Tower 2
1995	Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya	Islamist	Croatia	1	?
1997	Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya ; Jihad Talaat al-Fath.	Islamist	Egypt	1	62 k; 19 w
2201	Jaish-e- Muhammed,	Islamist	India	1	?
2002	Al Qaeda	Islamist	Tunisia	1	19 k
2002	Jemaah Islamiyah	Islamist	Indonesia (Bali)	1	202k;
2003	Jemaah Islamiyah	Islamist	Indonesia	1	12k; 150 w
2002	Al-Qaeda linked Somalis	Islamist	Kenya	1	13k; 80 w
2003	MILF: Moro Islamic Liberation Front	Islamist	Philippines		21 k; 150 w
2003	GIMC Moroccan Combatant Group	Islamist	Morocco	1 - 5 **	45k
2003	Several Sunni &Shiite Suicide Groups	Islamist	Pakistan	3	?
2003	Islamist Radicals	Islamist	Turkey	3	50 killed, 700 wounded
2003	Al Qaeda Linked Groups	Islamist	Saudi Arabia	1	34 killed
Early 2004	Ansar al-Islam, Ansar al-Sunna 2	Islamist	Kurdish & Shia Iraq	2 (Feb, March 2004)	290 killed, 500+ w

* Entries for MKO added after a google search on January 13, 2006, when it finally dawned on prof bug as he was puttering around on the pc that this murderous Marxist-Islamist group of anti-regime terrorists --- who killed thousands of citizens and officials of the terrorist-supporting, semi-totalitarian regime of fervent Shiite hardlines mullahs --- had been busy Kabooming there in the late 1970s and 1980s. The exact date of two separate suicide attacks on Teheran mosques isn't clear from this source, but it is an outstanding analysis of the MKO's terrorism and history: click here for Michael Rubin's up-to-date analysis. The suicide attack in 1994 killed most of the Iranian cabinet and dozens of parliamentarians.

** Simultaneous kaboomings, 5 in all. How would Pape have counted these, one attack or five? (depends, apparently, on whether they were Islamist terrorists or not).

¹The GIA-hijacked French passenger plane was intended to assault the Eiffel Tower full of tourists, but when the French pilots faked an emergency landing in Marseilles, the plane was stormed, and the terrorists were arrested. It was this fake landing that led bin Laden to conclude later that the 9/11 hijackers needed to take control of the planes and fly them into their targets.

² These two Kurdish Islamist groups did not carry out suicide terrorist attacks until February 2004, first against Kurdish moderate political parties and then against Shiites, even as they also started Kabooming in Turkey about the same time. So are we being unfair? No, not really. Consider that the first suicide attack came on February 1st, a mere 32 days after Pape stopped his contrived data-collection, and he was no doubt busy writing his book ms. at the time . . . too busy to notice these suicide attacks or bother rethinking his theory. Then too, let us not forget, Pape claims on p. 99 that his logit model entails a mighty "predictive model" that enhances our confidence in the predictive power of his theory.

Some Useful Comments

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
--- Benjamin Disraeli

* First off, note that separate suicide terrorist campaigns carried out by the same Islamist terrorist group are distinguished only if the target-country had changed . . . the case of Hezbollah, for instance, a pioneer suicide-terrorist group. Pape, by the way, can't even get Hezbollah's continued suicide attacks on Israel after 2000 right --- and for, apparently, the same reasons: by June of that year, Israel had withdrawn from all of Lebanese territory as part of what Prime Minister Barak thought would be a comprehensive peace settlement signed with Yasser Arafat at Camp David in July, with President Clinton the mediator. Hezbollah's continued terrorist attacks on Israelis --- whether direct or through Islamic Jihad (another Shiite terrorist group funded and supported by Syria and Iran) --- would, you see, contradict his theoretical claim that suicide terrorism is prompted by democratic military occupation.

Come to that, as the 2nd table shows, Pape can't bring himself to note how Hezbollah carried out two attacks on Argentine soil in the early 1990s. The last prof bug checked, it was about 14,000 miles away from southern Lebanon, but hey, that would be a clever way to protest possible Argentine occupation of Lebanon in the future, no? In any case, as we'll see in a moment or two, Pape seems to share Islamist views that Jews everywhere --- even 14,000 miles from the Middle East --- are part of a global movement to crush Arab nationalist freedom.

More generally, Pape's starry-eyed apologia for this radical Shiite terrorist group, along with Hamas, has to be read to be believed. You'd come away never knowing, for instance, that both terrorist movements were largely created, funded, and bolstered by Syria and Iran . . . two terrorist-supporting states that foster such terrorist groups for their own state-purposes. We'll take up Pape's gushing laundry-job on their behalf later in this buggy article . . . specifically in Part Three. Nor would you ever know that both terrorist organizations are explicitly committed to destroying Israel as a sovereign state, but why should Pape bother to delve into such irrelevant detail when he's busy doing 4th dimension theorizing and outer-space logit modeling?

* Note next that the buggy revisions for table 1 not only corrects the deceptive presentation by Pape on p. 15 of Dying to Win, but also some astonishing data-defects. We just mentioned Pape's cockeyed handling of Hezbollah . . . still very active, by the way, in Israeli Kaboomings contrary to any of Pape's analysis or data-sets! As for the Kashmir Islamist terrorists, it turns out that getting accurate information that clearly distinguishes between mass-murdering terrorist attacks and the suicidal variant carried out in either that country or in India itself is hard to get, despite prof bug's looking at several sources for about a half-hour's search on google. Still, as the corrected data and more accurate presentation show, 13 of the 15 suicide groups in Pape's Table 1 --- all active in attacks between 1980 and the end of 2003 --- were Islamic in nature.

*Shift attention now to the buggy table. Note the astonishing omissions in Pape's table --- a good 21 in number, all of them without exception Islamic terrorist groups. Are the omission deliberate? Maybe, but who can say sure? Possibly Pape himself couldn't tell us even if we coaxed him onto a shrink's couch for a few sessions. People's motives in doing all but the simplest things are usually complex, not simple and straightforward; and self-delusion is common.

One thing for sure: intentionally or not, Pape's extravagantly botched data-sets in several of his chapters --- especially 1, 6, and 7 --- add up to a laundry job that might be the envy of Swiss bankers who maintain secret accounts for the world's assorted gangsters, dictators, terrorists, corrupt miscreants, and anal-compulsive tax-evaders. Between 1980 and 2003, there were 36 total suicide terrorist groups active in the world, and 34 of them were Islamic.

* The closest that Pape comes to catching some of these suicide terrorist attacks, at any rate after 9/11's attacks, is in table 9, which is found 40 pages further on in his book (p. 55). And what does he do with the few overlapping cases there? He claims that all of the countries attacked --- Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Tunisia, Morocco, Indonesia, and Kenya --- were all considered allies of the US in the War on Terrorism by bin Laden, and hence he labels them --- wrongly --- under the misleading title of "Al Qaeda vs. United States and Allies Since 9/11."

For one thing, table 9 says nothing at all about the 10 Islamist terrorist groups active before the attacks on New York and Washington D.C, all of them Kabooming Islamic countries except for Argentina and India. For another thing, we have no idea how closely linked any of the terrorist groups that carried out these attacks were to al Qaeda. Pape may think this --- his mind seems to crackle with special-pleading thoughts --- but prof bug's table omitted a suicide terrorist attack on China in 2002 precisely because the security authorities in that country never fully identified the attackers or their group-affiliations.

Very likely, though, the terrorist groups involved were Islamist.

* More strangely --- but apparently very much in line with Pape's built-in prejudices --- Pape lists as the "Victims' Identity" of the attacks on two synagogues in Istanbul that month "9 Jews". That's it. Not "9 Turkish citizens" or "9 Turkish Jews", but "Jews" --- a view of Jews world-wide that is hard to distinguish from radical Islamists' paranoid-charged conspiratorial views, or for that matter Nazi views too . . . Jews a rootless cosmopolitan people even if those in Turkey had lived there several hundred years. Pape, as we'll see later today, is usually cagey in keeping his prejudices and pro-Islamist views under wrap, but here he lets the cat out of the bag as blatantly as he could. How would he react if a group of enraged American Jews attacked a Muslim mosque in, say, Detroit to protest a Hamas or Islamic Jihad suicide Kabooming in Tel Aviv? Would he create a table labeling the victims "9 Arabs?"

Compare Pape's little slip-up with bin Laden's views expressed in late 2003 on the World Jewish-Conspiracy:

The Jews are leading you astray under the illusion of democracy, to attack our religion at the expense of our blood and our countries...you have fallen victim to money and assets and to those who control the media, among them Jews, who push you to fight us at your expense and at ours in a conflict that does not concern you. Bush acts at the behest of the Zionist lobby who put him into the White House, and is interested in the military destruction of Iraq and in its oil.

Or consider what a Saudi cleric said in 2002, capturing what 60% of Arabs believed about the 9/11 attacks as well --- that they weren't carried out by Muslims, rather by a Jewish-led US cabal (Gallup Poll of 9 Arab countries in the winter of 2001-2002:

"I don't believe that the attack on America [on September 11th] was perpetrated by bin Laden or the Muslims. I think differently. I believe it was a scheme. What is happening now is a continuation of an ancient attack. It is a continuation of the Jewish deception and the Jewish-Zionist wickedness which infiltrates the U.S.... I am surprised that the Christian U.S. allows the 'brothers of apes and pigs' [meaning the Jews] to corrupt it. [The Jews] have murdered the prophets and the messengers. [The Jews] are the most despicable people who walked the land and are the worms of the entire world. They are all evil. And why? Because they are deceiving and plotting aggressors..."



* Then, too, since dozens of countries world-wide are linked to the US war on terrorism --- if not necessarily supporting the military intervention in Iraq --- al Qaeda or its affiliates or imitators abroad could attack any of them, and Pape would then no doubt lump the attack under the same heading in an updated table 9 for a 2nd edition of Dying to Win.

The table's catch-all nature of diverse Islamist terrorist groups is all the more a mirror-illusion job for another reason: Pape, as we'll see later today, applies absolutely no reality-testing whatsoever to al Qaeda's or any radical Islamist group's subjective worldviews, and so any country on the globe that these terrorist groups Kamboomed would have to be dubbed a US ally, either formally or informally. And of course, since all extremist Islamist groups worldwide --- not just terrorist ones --- see Jews in paranoid-fantasy ways as all-powerful descendants of "apes" and "pigs" who deserve to be slaughtered, Jews killed anywhere around the globe would also be seen by al Qaeda and others of likeminded niceties as "allies of the US".

* It gets worse for Pape's make-believe data-set and the theory and statistical work based on it.

A suicide bomber killed about two dozen people and wounded dozens more in Guilin, China in October 2002, but Chinese authorities have never indicated the group to which the bomber belonged. Still, here's another non-democratic country that was targeted by suicide Kaboomers that Professor Pape --- who likes to boast when he is on TV that his group at the University of Chicago has the largest data-base for all suicide attacks since the late 1970s --- somehow managed to overlook. And just three months after Pape's wildly botched data-gathering of suicide terrorism came to an end --- December 31, 2003 --- Islamist suicide-bombers carried out an attack in the capital city of Uzbekistan . . . another Islamic authoritarian regime.

But then if he did have to take note of them --- which he didn't --- he'd no doubt hide them away in table 9 on p. 55 too . . . China and Uzbekistan also allies of the US in the War on Terrorism. When you get down to it, other than Iran, Syria, Cuba, and North Korea, it's hard to find any country world-wide that either doesn't support the US in a variety of UN votes going back to 9/11 on fighting suicide terrorism, or is neutral . . . most of the UN members falling into the former category.

* Note, finally, that except for Hezbollah and Jaish-e- Muhammed, all the omitted Islamist terrorist groups in the 2nd buggy table attacked civilians and security forces in non-democratic countries . . . . a statistical trend that collides head-on with Pape's theoretical claims as well as his Hall-of-Illusions data-set that he himself coded and compiled in chapter 6 for logit modeling. Remember, by self-organizing his data-set that way, Pape ruled out by definitional-fiat any attacks on non-democratic states . . . a nifty way to salvage a nonsensical theory by statistical means, always assuming you can get away with it.



The Outcomes of These Corrected Data and Proper Presentation?

Instead of the original and flagrantly misleading cover-up in Pape's table 1, p. 15, we now find that there were 36 Islamic groups active in suicide terrorism, not just 7 that appear in his original presentation. With only two other groups not Islamic in that category --- the Tamil Tigers' LTTE and the Sikh's BKI (with 1 suicide attack to its credit) --- we now find that Islamic dominance soars to 34 of the 36 total . . . or 94.4% of them.

We also found something else that crashed pell-mell into Pape's botched or doctored-up stuff. Specifically, Islamic extremist groups attacked more non-democratic Muslim states than democratic military occupiers --- a trend that emerged early on in the 1980s and has intensified since 2003. It's the major reason why Muslim countries fear Islamist extremists more than Western and other non-Muslim countries --- a finding brought out in a recent Pew Organization Global Attitudes Survey reproduced in Part Two here, along with some other attitudinal matters that are also at loggerheads with Pape's Alice-in-Wonderland theorizing and predictions.

And Prof Bug's Conclusion?

Never in a long scholarly career has he seen such extravagantly botched, fiddled, or misused data . . . especially in connection with what is supposed to be a theoretical breakthrough and its alleged causal pathways submitted to statistical testing. Yes, never. No exaggeration

Let's put this judgment in nutshell-terms. When you go to a used car lot, a good guide should always be Caveat Emptor! --- Buyer Beware! --- lest you be suckered. When you read Pape, it's no less important that you be guided by Caveat Lector! --- Reader Beware! --- lest you . . . well, you get the idea, no?

One Further Point.

Some of the buggy analysis here is largely conjectural, and in the end all of it is a matter of personal judgment on his part. Still, there's more than enough evidence in Pape's Dying to Win and his other writings to hope that the analysis unfolded in this buggy article isn't wholly subjective, that instead it's pretty accurate --- with Pape's worldview turning out, in the end, to be an uneasy, oddball mix of

• Managerial power-realism in international relations theory that exudes contempt for the US's recurring pursuits of democratic change and other ideals abroad;

• Plus much blame-America for its off-putting-hubris-and-hypocrisy on the world-scene that will provoke, sooner or later, catastrophe for us;

• And, to complete the psychic jumble, certain standard-model left-wing pieties and ostentatious bull-shitting empathy with all the alleged victims of America's overweening power and callous indifference to others world-wide . . . an ideological medley that would be reflexively understood and appreciated with huge satisfied nods-of-their-heads by chronic readers of, say, The Nation.

Would Pape fully agree with our argument? No way. Would that surprise you? When you get down to it, there are very few people in the world free of self-illusions and other self-deceptive mental defenses and able and inclined toward honest introspection.

Do you know anybody like that? If so, count yourself lucky.

That said, prof bug needs once more to underscore a point of importance at the outset here: however much he believes that he has touched on some key underlying stuff jostling about in Pape's mental world, the opinions and judgments he comes up with are, in the end, a matter of his own personal interpretations, nothing else. And so, he will be more than happy to admit error and post corrections prominently here should anyone who knows Pape well come up with convincing evidence to the contrary.





 

PART ONE:
PAPE'S WORLD VIEWS AND FOLLIES

"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
--- Lewis Carroll

The Buggy Articles To Come

Agreed: a strange way to begin some comments about Pape's mental outlook and theoretical approach to international relations and how they seem to have animated his . . . well, wrong and garbled analysis of suicide terrorism and the whitewashing apologia for the dominant role of jihad Islamism in its outbreak and spread since 1980. Still, don't fret here. There's a reason for beginning this way, something you'll see in a moment or two.

As things are shaping up, a 9th buggy article will be needed to complete our close-up dissection of Pape's statistical work, after which a 10th article will bring the Pape-series to a close . . . or so prof bug hopes. That final article, as things are also emerging, will likely be of particular interest to buggy visitors.

Focused on Dying to Win's 7th chapter --- which unfolds an extravagantly long and bungled effort by Pape to prettify bin Laden, al Qaeda, and radical Islamist fundamentalism --- the buggy analysis in that forthcoming article will seek to highlight the swarms of howlers and snafus that crowd in and mar almost every point in the Pape-argument; it will show, in the end, that Pape's work adds up to an elaborate laundry-job . . . a spun-out sequence of special-pleading and excuse-making for vicious, hate-filled Islamist cutthroats and terrorists. Is this an exaggeration? No, just the opposite. Reading Pape's Chapter 7, you'd never remotely know that the fear of these kill-happy jihadists frighten the Muslim populations of several Arab and non-Arab countries --- Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan, and so on --- even more than they have the Russians, West Europeans, Americans, and other Western countries . . . at any rate down through last spring (2005), since which time, possibly, the suicide assaults in London during July might have closed the gap between at least European and Muslim-majority outlooks here.

Note that these opinion-findings were set out in the Pew Global Attitudes Survey published last summer and were cited in the previous buggy article. Note too, though, that Pape manages to goof up even on the simple task of predicting the thrust of these trends in global opinion even though they were already under way and increasingly evident while he was probably still writing the final draft of Dying to Win.

 

You Want Evidence?

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
--- Niels Bohr

Here's the evidence, and if it has a familiar look, that's not coincidental --- just the opposite. The Pew Global Attitude Survey results were set out in essentially the same manner in the 6th buggy article, and as you saw there, you can see again what happens: in blunt terms, Pape's special-pleading, error-riddled arguments in Dying to Win leave him wandering deep in left field . . . or maybe, when you think about it, on some other planet that's millions of miles removed from the realities back here on earth. In particular, he says categorically in his last chapter --- finished, remember, most likely in late 2004 or on into 2005 --- that the effort of the US and its military allies has been disastrous for our country in the war on terrorism . . . not least because our military policies and promotion of regime-change in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere have increasingly, dangerously, won support among Muslim populations for bin Laden and suicide-terrorist reprisals.

 



Oh? Actually, the Opposite Is the Case

Start, as a memory-jog here, with how the first Pew table captures the realities on earth, not those imaginary ones unfolding in a Pape-land of bogus tables and long dark statistical nights: click here for the source



Now shift attention and look at this table:

• As you can see from both tables, the fears of Islamist extremism held by Indonesians, Pakistanis, and Turkey --- 230 million, 180 million, and 80 million in population respectively --- actually exceeded those held in the leading non-Islamic countries . . . at any rate, down to through the end of spring 2005 and hence right before the two attacks by Islamist terrorists on London subways in July. Since then, other polls show a swelling tide of growing apprehension all over Western Europe.

The Outcomes of Both Tables?

First and foremost, notice that there's a built-in collision between these Pew survey results and Pape's wonderland view of things.

Again and again in Dying to Win, Pape refers either explicitly or by clear inference to Islamic suicide-terrorists in wondrous pomaded ways. From his lofty perch, they don't loom as homicidal mass-murderers full of raging hatred and urges for slaughtering their own paranoia-projected enemies --- above all Jews, America, America's democratic allies, infidels, moderate chicken-hearted Muslims, and the Muslim Trojan-Horse rulers in power. What's more, their younger volunteer Kamboomers aren't confused young men and women with anguished identity-problems; no, far from that, they're really a pretty good crop of decent and admirable chaps who turn out to be first and foremost community-minded altruists and nationalist freedom-fighters, and if they've had to resort to self-Kabooming while bombing others, it's been done reluctantly and only out of desperation . . . the only way, they've been convinced, to lift the boot of democratic military oppression and free their compatriots for robust national self-determination.

Huh? Pape really believes this? Exactly what compatriots in Iraq --- a small percentage of the Sunni population, itself only about 15-20% of Iraq's 25 million people --- are the Kaboomers speaking for so that they can be free for national self-determination?

Prologue Comments



It was in the 6th article that the buggy series began probing the numerous flaws and mishaps that ripple and swell throughout Pape's statistical work.

The buggy analysis there moved at a fast, fairly top-skimming approach, exactly as prof bug observed it would. Today's article is different. It slows down the pace and intensifies the scrutiny of Pape's statistical ship-wreck, which reflects, as it sinks bow-first into some dark deep miasma, the teeming blunders, glitches, and fallacies that swarm throughout Dying to Win and wear away its theoretical understructure and guidance-systems. Those flaws aren't confined to theoretical generalizations and statistical work. They also haunt almost all of Pape's major data-sets, starting with the very first table on p. 15 and on through subsequent chapters, including the one concocted for use in logit modeling in Chapter 6.

And what does this ship-wreck leave in its tow? Well, whether intentionally or not, this clear impression: both Pape's theory and the statistical work add up to a whitewashing of the dominant role of Islamist extremism in the rash of suicide terrorism that has erupted on the world scene since 1980.

One Final Point

1. Today's buggy argument begins with Part Four. That's purposeful, a clear indicator that it's a direct follow-up of the previous article in this series on Robert Pape. It sets out in detail what were presumably Pape's logit-models, including the final . . . well, final "two" fitted models that p. 99 and fn. 43 on p. 294 refer briefly to.

2. Part Five probes the various technical problems that beset Pape's data-set of 58 cases.

The previous buggy article, recall, examined the biases, glitches, and havoc-making howlers that riddled the data-set in substantive ways --- above all, its total exclusion of a good 10 Islamist terrorist groups that carried out suicidal attacks between 1980 and 2003's end. Not only did this exclusion further conceal the overwhelmingly dominant role of Islamist groups in those suicidal attacks --- a total of 17 of the 19 such terrorist groups --- but it allowed Pape to focus his logit modeling on only military occupations of nationalist minorities or alien populations by democratic countries. In this sloppy lopsided manner, without ever owing up to it, Pape solved much of his regression-work by definition . . . not that the final statistical results that finally emerged didn't founder anyway . . . or so we will see in greater detail today.

The argument in Part Five switches focus and probes the technical troubles of Pape's wholly self-created data-set: not the ways he selectively included only cases that fitted his theory, or coded, classified, and organized the 58 cases he claims to have found, but rather whether its small size isn't suitable for logistic regression . . . at any rate with standard maximum likelihood estimations, the standard way all software packages calculate the coefficients of variables in logistic regression. Several indicators converge to show that Pape's sample size is simply inadequate and will produce completely unreliable "effects" for the coefficients and equally unreliable outcomes for the binary dependent variable (the frequency rates at which suicide terrorism was observed to occur or not occur in the total 58 cases).

But note.

The inadequate size of Pape's self-made sample set need not have been impossible to run with fairly accurate estimates of coefficient values, provided he had recognized his troubles with its size and resorted to what are called "exact methods" of logistic estimation. There's a 99% likelihood that he didnit. Pape's knowledge of logistic regression and logit analysis, you see, seems confined to basics and a strictly cookbook approach to statistical work --- unless, of course, he has been deliberately conning us with disastrous logit results on p. 99 and in fn. 43 on p. 294; and most likely he never realized that his sample set was too small for proper maximum likelihood estimation and that he needed to fall back on "exact methods" for small samples.

3. Part Six --- which will appear in the next buggy article (the 8th in this series) --- will delve deeply then into more of the technical howlers that ripple through Pape's statistical work, focusing especially on his astonishingly naive and totally misleading interpretations of what his reported logit modeling amounted to.

...........................................................

Remember What Was Said in the Previous Buggy Article

As the warning sounded in its introductory part noted, we're reduced to some speculation in the analysis of Pape's logit modeling here.

No help for it. Pape's astonishingly stingy reports of his logit modeling --- how many models were specified, how they tested against one another, what the estimated coefficients of his variables were in each, what tests of their statistical significance he actually used, and what, if any, goodness-of-fit test for overall model performance he used --- leaves us no choice. Fortunately, if we assume certain things and infer some other things from his briefly reported models on p. 99 --- presumably his 2nd and 4th specified logit models --- we can be relatively confident about most of what follows.

In any case, something certain will emerge by the end of today's buggy argument: in a word, what a disastrous hash of a wrong, badly misconceived theory Pape's logit modeling turns out to be . . . a statistical fiasco from start to finish.

The fiasco starts with a lopsidedly wrong data-set that Pape uses as a sample selection --- equal to its population --- for his logistic regressions. The disaster continues with erroneous interpretations of his reported logit models' success as "predictive models"; it very likely envelopes his interaction term, a key independent variable in at least the two models he reports on briefly; it infests his likely estimated coefficients quite apart from the misinterpreted interaction term --- a near-certainty, as we'll see, with the existence of what's called a "zero-cell defect" in his reported classification results (these play havoc with logit estimations); and it shoots up and multiplies in . . . well, no need to run ahead of our argument here. Parts Two and Three will be the place to delve into these troubles.

First Things First Though

Not surprisingly, in Pape's analysis, those world-views and strategic calculations turn out to have little or nothing to do with Islamist fundamentalism --- itself, Pape assures us at the start of chapter 7, peaceful and mainly concerned to fight off western cultural and economic imperialism --- and almost everything to do with nationalist resistance to such neo-colonialism . . . the latter, please note, a term that Pape seems himself to subscribe to. At any rate, he doesn't contradict it, and he even insists that what counts anyway is how bin Laden and his terrorist associates see the world, not how average Americans or others do.

On Pape's view, then, bin Laden and al Qaeda are animated overwhelmingly by motives and strategic calculations that are fully in line with Pape's nationalist theory of suicide terrorism. Presumably, too, so are its loose affiliates world-wide as well as its imitator terrorists in the Muslim world.

Not that Pape himself uses the term "Muslim world." It's a no-no for him --- and for reasons you're thoroughly familiar with by now.

Why Pape Has To Use Logit Modeling

He has to --- or some other, if less popular non-linear regression technique --- because his outcome or dependent variable --- whether suicide terrorism occurs or not --- is a binary qualitative variable that is inherently non-linear. The alternative outcomes --- if suicide terrorism occurs (Y = 1) or not (Y = 0) --- can't be regressed with linear equations for reasons that should be familiar to all of you.

As for Pape's independent variables on which the dependent variable is regressed --- once the non-linear equations are transformed by the logit model into linear ones using logged odds to the base _e --- they are some combination of nationalist rebellion and religious differences between a democratic military occupier and the occupied people.

So far, so good. But wait!

Look back at Pape's diagram of his theory's causal influences and pathways. What has happened to "occupation" as a causal influence in his logit models? In particular, why doesn't it figure as an independent estimating variable (or covariate or predictor) in the models whose equations will be set out in a moment?

Well, as we noted in the preliminary remarks earlier today, we're dealing with another slippery technique of Pape's. Note that in the diagram, the role of "occupation" isn't confined there to democratic military occupiers; it refers in general to any occupation. By definition, however, the data-set that Pape has assembled, coded, and classified to run his logit models on is limited to occupations by democratic countries. The result? It's two-fold: 1) Instead of hundreds of occupations by democratic and non-democratic governments between 1980 and 2003 of territorial based ethnic minorities that resented central government control, Pape by definition limits the disputes to 58 cases, all involving democratic countries where, it turns out, 9 suicide terrorist groups emerged. And 2) Pape's limited data-set then compounds the problems by ignoring at least 9 or 10 Islamist-inspired suicide terrorist groups that carried out attacks against Muslim autocratic countries.

And Now Our Buggy Conjectures About Pape's Logit Modeling

Despite the Surprisingly Spare Reporting, We Will Assume Pape Followed Proper
Modeling Procedures

With these big provisos in mind, we can assume that he had specified 4 or 5 models. Strictly speaking, given the need to test each logit model for its overall model performance as he added or experimented with different independent variables --- or estimators or predictors (in logistic regression terminology) or covariates (ditto)--- he would have likely opted for 5 models, starting with a baseline one in which any independent variables are set to 0 and he looked at the performance of the model using only the constant or intercept term and run it on his data-set of 58 cases.



 

Even so, we'll list the base mode with the constant or intercept term only and label it 1.1 and the theory-inspired first model as 1.2. As you can see immediately below, the intercept-only model is estimated with the covariates or independent variables set to zero. (Technically speaking, the two other independent variables that Pape's logit models use should be included and set to zero too.)

Pape's First Two Logit Models

Y = ln[p/(1-p)] = a + b₀X + b₀Z        (1.1)

Y = ln[p/(1-p)] = a + b₁X + b₂Z      (1.2 )

where:

* ln[p/(1-p)] = the logit = the logged odds that suicide terrorism (its value equal to "1") will occur if someone were to pick a random case from Pape's 58 data sample and observe whether in fact it will occur or not the next time.

*a = the constant or intercept, whose final value Y takes when the X and Z independent variables all equal zero
*b₁X = nationalist rebellion
*b₂Z = religious differences between the occupier and the occupied people

As you've probably already inferred, the two independent variables --- nationalist rebellion and religious differences --- are qualitative binary variables too, called "categorical" variables . . . or estimators or covariates or "predictors" in logistic jargon.

That means that they too are treated like dummy variables, exactly like the dependent or outcome variable --- suicide terrorism is observed to either occur or not occur when Pape applies his logit models to his self-created data-set. There's nothing wrong with dummy variables used as independent variables. They appear all the time in linear regression too. It's the dependent binary qualitative variable that requires the use of non-linear regression like logistic.

The use of the independent dummy estimators, though, does require --- as you'll see momentarily --- a larger sample size than otherwise, even if Pape didn't realize this himself. (This is especially true when the distribution of the categorical variables in a logit model leans heavily to one value --- which as we'll see is true for Pape's reported 2nd model. In fact, there are only 9 occurrences of suicide terrorism in his relatively small sample size --- equal to the population of "democratic" military population of 58 total cases --- and a classified output of the sort that appears on p. 99 is lopsided toward its non-occurrence. Worse, there's a zero-cell in the reported classification table, which plays havoc as we'll also see with all the estimators' coefficients.)

Note that all the subsequent independent variables --- one more for the next two logit models Pape constructed --- are also categorical and hence have to be treated as dummy variables too.

Note, too, that once you've grasped the logit identity's role as it appears in the two specified models above --- ln[p/(1-p)] --- we'll take it for granted that you know logit analysis has transformed probabilities into odds and logged them to the base _e . . . the natural logarithm, so we'll just drop it from the next equations. What that logit transformation does is remove both the base and ceiling of probability estimates --- 0, 1 --- and in effect stretches out the S curve of the original non-linear cdf to look linear.



Pape's Reported 2nd Logit Model

Pape's astonishingly bare-boned report on this 2nd model appears on p. 99 and in a fn. 43 on p. 294 in Dying to Win. In particular, the reported "predictive success" he claims on p. 99, as we'll see soon, appears in a 2x2 classification table that, typically, is misinterpreted by Pape on several counts: the classified results perform miserably, it isn't a prediction model in any dictionary sense of the term, it isn't even a prediction-model by those logistic-regression theorists who take "predictive efficiency" seriously (like Scott Menard) --- rather, not even a classification table but what's called a "selection table" --- and . . . well, we'll get to the tangled confusion soon enough in Part Five. Note here that if Pape didn't distinguish between these three kinds of tables, his logistic software --- whichever program he ran --- will have not properly tested the observed vs. predicted outcomes for statistical significance. He would have needed to apply the proper statistic and calculate the significance himself. (See Scott Menard, Applied Logistic Regression (Sage University Paper, 2nd ed., 2001), pp. 28-33)

Here, meanwhile, is what the second model with a 3rd estimator added to 1b's: an interaction term for nationalist rebellion and religious different working in tandem on the behavior of the outcome variable --- suicide terrorism's occurrence or not:

Y = a + b₁X + b₂Z + b₃XZ      2.0

where:



b₃XZ = the interaction term just mentioned

 

Pape's Barely Referred to 4th Logit Model:

Y = a + b₁X + b₂Z + b₃XZ + b₄C     4.0

where:

b₄C = concession made by democratic occupying countries to armed nationalist rebels (including terrorist groups) that, according to Pape, stopped them from resorting to suicide terrorism. /span>

As you'll see, Pape invokes this 4th independent variable on p. 99 totally out of the blue with head-spinning abruptness: it doesn't appear at all in the diagrammed causal-pathways that appears on p. 96 of Dying to Win, and it is mentioned in passing for half a paragraph, followed by the itty-bitty fonts in the weird table on p. 100. After which, it isn't mentioned again for 139 pages in the rest of his book --- on p. 239, the text itself ending on p. 250.



As we noted earlier and will clarify in Part Six, its sudden invocation looks like a desperate, last-second rescue-job by Pape to save his reported 2nd logit model's results from disastrous mediocrity. (There's also a 3rd logit model Pape performed, mentioned for a sentence or two in fn 43 on p. 294: it substituted "linguistic difference" for religious difference, but Pape reported that the logit model couldn't be estimated properly because there wasn't enough variation across the 58 cases of military occupation for logistic regression's estimating procedure --- maximum likelihood estimation --- to be carried out and successfully distinguish the effects of the model's independent variables on the behavior of the outcome variable, suicide terrorism's occurrence or not.)

As for the 3rd logit model of Pape's, don't worry. Prof bug hasn't forgotten about it. It uses a different estimator in place of "religious difference" --- specifically, "linguistic difference" --- and as we'll see soon enough, Pape rejects it as not producing enough variation across the data-set to generate a statistically sound model.

 

INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS

This, the 6th article in an ongoing buggy series that probes Robert Pape's recently published book --- Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism --- focuses with doggedly single-minded determination on Pape's effort to test his nationalist theory of suicide terrorism statistically with logistic regression.

Pape's Logit Modeling Is a Disaster from Start to Finish

It's in chapter 6 of Dying to Win, which starts on p. 79 and ends on p. 101, that Pape explains his nationalist theory of suicide terrorism in detail, culminating in what he claims are its very likely causal pathways. These causal pathways are then diagrammed on p. 96, followed immediately by Pape claiming how they will then be tested by his logit modeling.

The diagram is set out below, and needless to add, the preferred causal pathways --- running left to right --- are those that Pape's logit models, run on a data-set that he himself creates from scratch. In particular, the data-set that he codes, organizes, and classifies adds up to a data-set of 58 cases of military occupation . . . all carried out by democratic governments of either alien populations or of national or ethnic minorities on their own territory. This data-set, in turn, becomes the sample selection that he runs on his logit models to test his nationalist theory's alleged causal pathways. Note that the sample selection is equivalent to the total universe or population of all such relevant cases of military occupation . . . or so Pape claims, and misleadingly so as we'll see.

Pape's Model of Suicide-terrorism 1) Solid arrows represent the theory proposed in this book.
2) The dashed arrow --- running from rebellion to nationalism --- represents a casual path
that sometimes influences the production of national identity;
but that plays little role in determining when suicide-terrorism campaigns occur.
3) The dotted arrow represents a causal path that al-Qaeda and perhaps other terrorist organizations
hoped will occur, but that has not done so.

No need to say that it's the causal pathways postulated by Pape's theory running from left to right that his logit modeling will test.

But Note

As for the "relevant" total of military occupations, Pape is either deliberately misleading us or fouling up once more . . . or maybe a combination of both. Or so we'll see.

In particular, like his nationalist theory of suicide terrorism, Pape's statistical testing of it turns out to be wrong and flawed from start to finish. The big trouble starts with a noticeably error-riddled data-set --- created, coded, and classified by none other than Pape himself --- that serves as the sample selection for his various logit models. No surprise there. All of Pape's most important data-sets, starting with the initial one set out in tabular form on p. 15, are markedly erroneous and unreliable . . . something we'll see again later today

That's bad enough, this severely handicapped and inaccurate data-set.

AND IT GETS WORSE, MUCH WORSE

Pape's statistical trouble mount and expand with the ways he has specified or constructed apparently four or five different logit models. It leads him, too, to some flagrant misinterpretations of his 2nd and 4th logit model's results --- the only ones he briefly refers to at all.

His trouble then swells and multiplies when he reports and misinterprets on several counts the results of his 2nd logit model on p. 99 in the form of a 2x2 classification table --- which will be reproduced here in a few moments. The results there are truly mediocre, not that Pape seems to realize this, and he also seems to think that they have something to do with "prediction" of specific suicide terrorist attempts in the future --- another big error. By that point, his statistical woes proceed at full gallop. His 4th logit model, referred to very briefly on p. 99, looks like a desperate, spur-of-the moment attempt to salvage the 2nd model's results from disaster even while a publishing deadline hung over his head . . . most likely, as we'll see later on, when the galley-proofs were in his hands and one of the 16 research assistants he used for his book --- or possibly one of the 20 "expert" readers the book also acknowledges --- suddenly awakened from a self-imposed brain-coma and saw what a snafu Pape's 2nd logit model amounted to.

Nor Is That All

Oddly, too, the final to-the-rescue 4th estimator or predictor in that last logit model --- "timely concessions" to nationalist rebels by governments that prevent the rebels from turning to suicide terrorism --- isn't referred to substantively after p. 99 for another 140 pages of text. Yes, that's no exaggeration.

Only on p. 239, just a few pages from the end of the book's text, does Pape refer to the role of concessions once more as a way to deal with suicide terrorist groups like al Qaeda . . . and this, believe it or not, is in a chapter that criticizes the current War on Terrorism and urges on the government in Washington a generous Pape-based set of policy changes that fit his nationalist theory and its wondrous statistical testing. And that's it. A 4th logit model is supposed to salvage a disastrously reported 2nd logit model's results, and its formidable theoretical role is mentioned in exactly one paragraph 140 pages later, with nothing else to show for it.

To compound all this statistical disarray, Pape's reports of his statistical work are irresponsibly stingy, so much so that they have no parallel in prof bug's memory . . . at any rate after decades of reading probably hundreds of social science statistical studies.

HOW THE BUGGY ARGUMENT WILL UNFOLD

All these and the swarms of other flaws that riddle the work of Pape's nationalist theory of suicide terrorism and in particular his statistical "testing" of it are dealt with in depth here today. The twists and turns of our buggy argument fall into five parts.

Part One Is . . .

something unusual on this buggy site: less devoted to rigorous argument and more an introductory survey of Pape's statistical claims and the problems that surround them and his work . . . all followed by a little fable about a Statistical Wonder, Professor Bernard de Stapler of the University of New Orleans, who pays a visit one day to our current National Security Adviser and urges that he be given a grant to help our country in the War on Terrorism. How? He will lead a team of expert researcher to undertake a lengthy study of the non-occurrence rate, with point-estimations and confidence-intervals included, of spitball terrorism in the United States. That little fable, which deals of course with a wholly imagined funny-figure guy, is then followed by a more serious look at how a teeny-bopper gum-chewer could either match the predictive success of Pape's 2nd logit model or outperform it.



Part Two Will . . .

start examining the defects that Pape's data-set used as a sample selection (equivalent to the population of events) for his logit modeling, but focus mainly on some weird, out-of-the-blue derriere-covering that Pape resorts to on p. 101 of Dying to Win.



Part Three Focuses . . .

more fixedly on Pape's highly tainted data-set, showing how it's no less reliable than any of the other major data-sets in his book, while managing to do what these other sets do: whitewash and conceal the over-towering dominance of Islamist extremism in the rash of suicide terrorism since 1980.

Part Four Will . . .

be largely, though not entirely, a summary of Pape's claims as to what his logit models will do for his nationalist theory of suicide terrorism, the specified four models that we presume he tested, and the sole report of his statistical work --- for all the hugging and puffing of his claims --- that appears in a 2x2 classification scheme on p. 99 of Dying to Win . . . discussed, astonishingly, in only two brief paragraphs there, plus a couple of even more cursory paragraphs tucked away in fn. 43 on p. 294.

By that point, prof bug will take it for granted that the readers of today's buggy article either have a sound familiarity with logistic regression or, at least, have read through the previous two articles that set out the basics of both linear and non-linear logistic regression. That said, all new technical terms or concepts like interaction terms and the nature of 2x2 classification tables --- which further have to be analyzed into "prediction" tables, classification tables, and selection tables for accurate statistical testing --- will be clarified and usually illustrated with one or more concrete examples.

Keep in mind finally that logistic regression and logit modeling (or analysis) are interchangeable terms.

And Part Five Finally . . .

will delve into the remarkable number of problems that torpedo Pape's technical statistical work, a story of ship-wrecked regressions that never make it to shore. (PS tacked on here: it turned out on December 17th, 2005 that the current buggy article would be better off stopping at the end of Part Four and delving into Pape's statistical woes at length in the next buggy article . . . largely done anyway.



One More Point

Something else to keep in mind too, even if it means repeating what was said a minute or two ago: never, in decades of reading scholarly work that uses various forms of statistical techniques and models --- including probably hundreds of articles by economists full of linear regression equations of sometimes 4th dimension aspirations --- has he seen such a skimpy, tightfisted report of statistical work as marks Pape's summary of his in Chapter 6 of Dying to Win.

The stingy elusiveness is all the more head-spinning when you consider Pape's puffed-up claims for what the logit modeling will do for his theory.

The reason can't be the publisher's demand that Pape tone down the use of technical statistical work in order to reach more readers. Why in that case go to the trouble to have three lengthy appendixes at the end of the book for reporting data-laden matter? Why not have a couple of pages in a fourth appendix to report in detail how he specified his logit models, how they were or were not nested in one another, how model performance was tested for, how the individual parameter or coefficient-values were tested, how he interpreted his interaction term in his presumably 2nd and 4th logit models, what the sensitivity and specificity of the "observed" behavior of his dependent variable were in frequency terms, what the positive error rate was, and . . . well, the list of omissions is much longer.

The actual reasons for the oddball stinginess of it all are matters that only Pape himself would know.



 

PART ONE:
PAPE'S CLAIMS FOR HIS STATISTICAL WORK: A PRELIMINARY SURVEY, NOTHING MORE AT THIS POINT

Yes, It's Just A Foretaste of What You'll Get in Greater Detail in Part Four Today

Despite this mountain of self-created troubles, Pape, all innocence presumably, sets out on pp. 96 and 97 of Dying to Win a set of claims as to what his logit modeling will do --- bolstered as it is by his data-set that's created with "focused comparative" case-studies. Specifically, the logit modeling will "enhance [our] confidence" that his nationalist theory of suicide terrorism has properly identified and tested successfully "the causal dynamics" that "determine" why suicide terrorist groups emerge and launch deadly attacks against civilians. "To test my theory," Pape says,

"I employ a methodology that combines the features of focused comparison and statistical-correlative analysis using the universe --- [read: total number] --- of foreign occupations, 1980-2003. Correlative analysis of this universe enhances confidence that my theory can predict future events by showing the patterns predicted by the theory occur over a large class of cases [58 in all]. Detailed analysis of historical cases enhances confidence that the correlations found in the larger universe are not spurious: the theory accurately identifies the causal dynamics that determine outcomes [of suicidal terrorism] " p. 96[italics and bold-type added].

Later, on p. 99 --- after the scantest report by a scholar of his statistical "testing" that prof bug has ever seen --- Pape, still the statistical ingénue, reinforces these claims. The results reported in his 2x2 classification table --- reproduced here in a few moments--- show that "the nationalist theory of suicide terrorism "predicts" that suicide terrorism would occur in tandem with only one of the combinations of independent variables: "that is, when there is both a religious difference and rebellion. The theory correctly "predicts" 49 of 58 cases, a result that is statistically significant at the highest common benchmark of .001, meaning that it could be achieved by chance less than once in 1000 times."

Prof Bug's Judgment About Pape's Claims?

As you might guess, they're all wrong! . . . and for reasons that will be set out in Part Four today. For what it's worth, Pape's badly interpreted 2x2 classification table pn p.99 with its mediocre results looks like this:

Occurence of
Suicide Terrorism and Democratic Occupation, 1980-2003

	Religious Difference	No Religious Difference
Rebellion	7/14
No Rebellion	1/15	0/20

Just note in passing, nothing more right now, the cruddy outcome of Pape's rate of "predictive" success in the top left-hand cell --- 7 cases of suicide terrorism actually observed in his 2nd logit model compared to the baseline logit model's "prediction" that there would be 14 such cases. That's a 50% rate of success. It's equivalent to you or me knowing nothing about suicide terrorism and flipping a coin a few dozen times while always calling "heads".

Note Too The Bottom Right-Hand Cell

As it happens, a zero-count in a contingency table --- even in the reorganized fashion that Pape reports it --- is statistically disastrous and is called a "zero-cell defect" in logistic jargon. The presence of such a zero-count is enough, according to one prominent logistic specialist, J.S. Cramer, "to play havoc with [any logit model's] estimation routines." If, for instance, you had access to the original contingency table produced by Pape's statistical software --- usually labeled "prediction success" or "percentage of successful predictions" or something like that --- what, exactly, would be the rate of successful prediction if you calculated 0/20 or, oppositely, the NPV or Negative Predictive Value that would following from dividing 20/0?

(These are conjectures, you understand: Pape does not provide us with the original 2x2 table that shows the frequency in each cell of "predicted" vs. "observed" outcomes . . . the predictive rate estimated originally with a baseline or null logit model using only the constant or intercept term on the right-hand side of the logit equation and the "observed rate" estimated by the final or fitted logit model that a researcher has used and tested statistically. Still, somewhere in that original table there was a zero rate of observed success.)

Nor is that all, Pape's ingénue innocence here notwithstanding.

Look now at the two other cells in the reported Pape table. See how there's a very low if non-zero frequency rate in each? Well, as Cramer adds, in such instances "estimation will not break down, but the quality of the estimates will be unfavorably affected . . . ." ( See Cramer, Logit Models from Economics and Other Fields, [Cambridge, 2003], p. 46.)

OTHER PROBLEMS GALORE

Mind you, these aren't the only flaws that mar the major reported statistical outcomes of Pape's logit modeling in his entire book. What follows is just a foretaste of what we'll be doing in Part Three or Four today.

(i.) His 2x2 classification model is something, for instance, that he . . .

Calls a prediction model: not so, not even for those who take the "predictive" success of a logistic regression fairly seriously. Come to that, as you'll see, it's not even a classification model --- rather, a selection model, and each of these three different kinds of reported "observations" in a logistic regression require a different test for statistical significance. It's about 95% likely that Pape didn't use the proper statistical test here: φ_p, phi-p (See Scott Menard, Applied Logistic Regression (Sage University Paper; 2nd ed, 2001), pp. 28-36).

(ii.) Then, too, among the numerous other reasons why "predictive" success, which is ---

really a measure of classification-consistency (even for a selection table if the cell-rates are properly tested for) --- is simply that it takes the natural-logged estimations of the logit identity-function that are strictly quantitative and run between (hypothetically) negative and positive infinity and reduce the range to a strict dichotomy of either 0 or 1 for "predictive" purposes. In doing so, the default cut-off rate is .05. That means, you understand, that if 6 or 7 of Pape's small sample-set of 58 cases showed up with a probability estimate of 0.46 or 0.47 or 0.48 or 0.499 on one side of the "predictive" cut-off rate, they were treated as equivalent to 0.001.

Here, by way of illustration, is a real report by Professor Karl Wuensch of a "classification output" --- note his proper reference to what Pape calls a "prediction table" --- that applies during cut-off rates (four exact) in order to demonstrate to readers what the reported occurrences are for a logit model and a large sample selection that he and two colleagues had used for a psychological experiment. The fitted logit model has several estimators or independent variables, and what they are and how the sample selection was contrived aren't germane here. Simply note the different outcomes, and how they are reported for various cut-off levels of prediction, followed by Wuensch's own comments of the sort that any respectable statistical specialist should emulate: