also, regarding Arab “culture”, it’s been my personal experience that these people lie about everything all the time, that lying is a way of life with them, and that you basically can’t believe a single word any of them say to you ...
and this cultural lying accounts for all levels of the military command structure always lying about everything going up the reporting chain ...
“...there will be no improvement in Arab militaries.”
GOOD! There’s some sort of problem with that?
I agree with many of these points. From what I’ve seen, Arabs want to be managers and do not want to get their hands dirty.
I’ve run into numerous Arabs with a BS in computer science who cannot write computer programs. This is despite have those courses on their transcripts with good grades. Early on, when I questioned one about this paradox, he said that in class they TALKED about how to program, but did not actually WRITE working programs. I was stunned. That is like going to car mechanic school and only talking about how to do repairs.
I have also heard that Arab armies do not have the well developed NCO structure we have here in the West. Rather it is the junior officers who are supposed to perform the NCO function. But it does not work out that way. They give orders to the troops (e.g., set up camp) and then walk away and congregate with their officer buddies. There is a class difference between officer and enlisted and no good way to bridge that gap.
Arabs are cynics, not Germans - they’re not robots who obey whatever their leaders say. Arabs will fight to the death, but for their clans and families rather than the monarch or president-for-life of the moment. Sure - they’ll join the chorus of people uttering the empty slogan of the moment just to blend in. But when it comes to laying down their lives - that’s reserved for family and clan.
Arab is synonymous with inept
“The real culprit Pollack argues is Arab culture. There is a “constant pressure to conform [which] is a corresponding stifling of originality.” The culture “consistently suppresses creativity, innovation, imagination, and all similar divergences from established patterns of action and thought.” The culture favors centralization of authority and virtually all authority is centralized at the top”
That comes from living under the totalitarian dictatorship which is islam.
“Honor and shame” is more of a purely cultural characteristic.
Thanks for your great synopsis of this study.
Your synopsis runs parallel to:
Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States
1998 Ralph Peters
https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/articles/98spring/peters.htm
Yes, I know that Peters went sideways, but this article is on the money.
The failure is greater where the avoidance of responsibility is greater. In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, oil money has masked cultural, social, technical, and structural failure for decades. While the military failure of the regional states has been obvious, consistent, and undeniable, the locals sense—even when they do not fully understand—their noncompetitive status in other spheres as well. It is hateful and disorienting to them. Only the twin blessings of Israel and the United States, upon whom Arabs and Persians can blame even their most egregious ineptitudes, enable a fly-specked pretense of cultural viability.
I read that in the 1967 war, while Israel was beating the crap out of Egypt, their allies, the Syrians, asked how things were going. Egypt in effect, said they were slaughtering the Israelis and now was the time to get in.
The Israelis got wind of this and because they were doing so well, moved a lot of troops up the entire length of Israel and waited.
The Syrians believed the Egyptians, stormed across,got their azz beat, and lost the Golan Heights to boot.
[Sidebar] Dunno if it’s an Urban Legend, but Israel was supposed to have a mole in the Syrian military. He mentioned how hot it was for their troops on the Golan Heights and suggested they plant trees to shade the emplacements. A few years later when the war broke out, the Israelis targeted all the groves of trees and wiped out the emplacements.
This article reminded me of the Patton quote regarding Arabs and how the fatalistic teachings of Muhammad is what keeps them stuck in the eighth century.
Funny thing. While searching Bing or Google I can’t find it. It appears that it is being scrubbed from the Internet. Curious.
Great post! Thanks!