Bibliographic record
Abstract
THE MESS THEY MADE The Middle East After Gwynne Dyer Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2007. 267pp, $21.99 paper (ISBN 0771029802)Gwynne Dyer, a journalist and columnist, attempts to analyze all prominent issues and actors in current state of affairs in Middle East and makes future predictions about (Iraq in particular). More than half of Dyer's book is dedicated to an analysis of in one way or another. The reasons that George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq, political and security situation in Iraq, future of Iraq, and impact of war on Iran's policy are discussed in separate chapters that are short but free of repetition. The remaining chapters address other major issues in Middle East, including radical Islamist terrorism, Iran's nuclear policy, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and post-Taliban Afghanistan. These latter chapters are more informative than former ones, although experts on Middle East will find little original analysis and many debatable points.The basic premise of book on is that Bush administration (they) has created a mess in country and lost war. The surge (a pathetic escalation) is not working and is unlikely to work (87). As a result, author predicts that United States will leave immediately after end of Bushs term because of the implosion of public opposition to war. In author's view, a US withdrawal from will be largely a positive development for Iraq-in long term at least-because presence of America is root cause of postwar difficulties in country.What this implies for larger Middle East is not clear in book. Dyer argues that declining US influence in Middle East following its anticipated withdrawal from coupled with the by destruction of Iraq will upset status quo in (2). Nowhere in book, however, are the unleashed by war specified. It is not Shi'ite because author argues that such a revival is largely exaggerated. It is not Islamist extremism and terrorism it breeds because they are not immediate consequences of war but responses to a century of foreign domination and manipulation of region (3). It is certainly not democratic forces in Arab countries which are either weak or virtually absent.Equally problematic is fact that author does not substantiate his alarmist description of Middle East since US invasion of Iraq. He writes in introduction that Everything is now up for grabs [in Middle East]: regimes, ethnic pecking orders within states, even 1918 borders themselves might change (2). In fact, in rest of book, such a picture does not emerge. Aside from prospect of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan and an Islamicized Iraq, author fails to tell us which regimes and pecking orders are likely to change. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.047 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.008 | 0.011 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.029 | 0.017 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".