Jesus. I sort of come to kind of trust your blog. And then you spin me off into some academic fistf••k. Please don’t. Might be important to you. But I don’t need you to point to this worthless yammer to credentialize your sometimes-cogent shit.

At least provide a warning.

You say “pwned,” they say “tenure.” Let’s call the whole thing off.

I just said I don’t give a shit about this. Why are you so bent out of fucking shape? Lighten up.

Some day Andrew may become a good policy analyst, as soon as he accepts that he does not know everything already and that he is not the equal of Andrew Bacevich. Until then, he needs to learn some humility.

I’ll fully accept that my view of the guy passes through the prism of our friendship, but I truly don’t see the arrogance you attribute to him. He concedes he doesn’t know everything all the time. If you won’t accept that he’s humble, will you at least accept that he’s humble-for-DC? I’m way more arrogant than Ex is.

What amount of time lived in the Middle East or Arabic language training is required until one is allowed to hold forth on the peoples and politics in the region?

*Sigh…*

I would have thought that the Peretzian/Palinesque nature of Exum’s argument would have been too much for you. Book larnin’: hwut’s it good fer? Nuthin’!

Oh for Christ’s sake. Exum isn’t that guy. Have you seen how academic Abu Muqawama gets.

Try this, then: “Oh yeah? Well, Ezra Klein’s never worked in a hospital before!”

I’m not judging how “academic” someone can “get,” I’m just looking at a very weird claim about how to do social science and calling it very weird.

Hey Spence, not to pick a fight, but it’s largely based on two things – first of all, I remember the old blog, pre-CNAS, where Exum was a good guy and understood his role in the universe. Then there was post-CNAS and he did change his attitude.
Second was this CNAS conference where he and Bacevich squared off on AfPak issues. It really rubbed me the wrong way. I’ve been in DC for 10 years (god help me) and I know there are people who know things and how the DC Beltway works and there are people who think they know things, but not how life plays out in the Beltway. Exum is in the latter circle.
And it’s not just what you know and who you, ah, suck up to, it’s understanding that there are Very Serious People who get paid to talk and then there are us minor functionaries who understand this sick defense process of ours and who understand how we can get enough scratch to pay the mortgage until we become one of those Very Serious People. Exum has not come to this realization yet.

OK fine, you guys win, I’m backing away, I just don’t care about this as much as you guys do.

To properly pwn Drezner, doesn’t one have to demonstrate that his lack of regional expertise as resulted in him saying something pretty embarrassing?

[Sorry, didn't see your backing away. Feel free to ignore this.]

Love ya, man, but how can you know if Drezner was pwned if you “don’t know or care” what the argument was even about? (And if Drez *was* pwned then why is Abu walking back everything he said through a guest-poster?)

That may be the greatest compliment I have heard Exum recieve in all the time ive followed his blog. Ever considered that he may not necessarily *want* to be one of the High and Mighty Ones, that he is not playing a strategic game but rather tries to do his job in the image of Kilcullen? I know, it boggles the mind…