Why do Arabs so often lose wars against non-Arabs? Why has so much of the terrorism activity for the last few decades been carried out by Arabs? Why are Arab societies so corrupt, so uneducated and lacking in economic or scientific progress? Even raising these issues is considered un-diplomatic, provocative, racist or worse. But there is something going on.
Take, for example, a recent item going round the web. Seems that last November, seven staff of the Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) company were checking out a new Airbus 340-600. This is a four engine, $240 million aircraft. Think of it as "747 Lite." It was being checked out before acceptance, and delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi. Through a horrendous series of errors by the people at the controls, the aircraft taxied at high speed and crashed into a barrier. The aircraft was totaled, and five people aboard were injured. There was never any official mention of the nationality of those responsible for the loss of the aircraft. Many people assume they were Arabs, although most technical jobs in the Persian Gulf are handled by non-Arab expatriates. This is still the case sixty years after the oil money began to flow. Surely that should have been sufficient time for a generation of Arab engineers, technicians and airline pilots to be trained. There have been some, but not nearly enough. Moreover, there are serious cultural problems with Arabs and technology. Many of the expatriates who have worked in the Middle East leave exasperated at the lackadaisical attitudes of the people they are trying to train, or supervise. American troops in Iraq have similar experiences when training, or just working with, Iraqis. The official PR stresses the positive experiences, but it's the negative ones that cause all the problems. If you want to get rid of all the problems over there, you have to understand what's going on or, more to the point, what isn't and why not.
At lot has been written about why Arab armies so consistently lose wars with non-Arabs. These reasons also explain why Arab nations, and many other Third World nations as well, also have trouble establishing democratic governments or prosperous economies. A lot of it has to do with culture, especially culture influenced by Islam. Some of the reasons for these failures are;
Most Arab countries are a patchwork of different tribes and groups, and Arab leaders survive by playing one group off against another. Loyalty is to one's group, not the nation. Most countries are dominated by a single group that is usually a minority (Bedouins in Jordan, Alawites in Syria, Sunnis in Iraq, Nejdis in Saudi Arabia). All of which means that officers are assigned not by merit but by loyalty and tribal affiliation.
Islamic schools favor rote memorization, especially of scripture. Most Islamic scholars are hostile to the concept of interpreting the Koran (considered the word of God as given to His prophet Mohammed). This has resulted in looking down on Western troops that will look something up that they don't know. Arabs prefer to fake it, and pretend it's all in their head. Improvisation and innovation is generally discouraged. Arab armies go by the book, Western armies rewrite the book and thus usually win.
There is no real NCO corps. Officers and enlisted troops are treated like two different social castes and there is no effort to bridge the gap using career NCOs. Enlisted personnel are treated harshly. Training accidents that would end the careers of US officers are commonplace in Arab armies, and nobody cares.
Officers are despised by their troops, and this does not bother the officers much it all. Many Arab officers simply cannot understand how treating the troops decently will make them better soldiers.
Paranoia prevents adequate training. Arab tyrants insist that their military units have little contact with each other, thus insuring that no general can became powerful enough to overthrow them. Units are purposely kept from working together or training on a large scale. Arab generals don't have as broad a knowledge of their armed forces as do their Western counterparts. Promotions are based more on political reliability than combat proficiency. Arab leaders prefer to be feared, rather than respected, by their soldiers. This approach leads to poorly trained armies and low morale. A few rousing speeches about "Moslem brotherhood" before a war starts does little to repair the damage.
Arab officers often do not trust each other. While an American infantry officer can be reasonably confident that the artillery officers will conduct their bombardment on time and on target, Arab infantry officers seriously doubt that their artillery will do its job on time or on target. This is a fatal attitude in combat.
Arab military leaders consider it acceptable to lie to subordinates and allies in order to further their personal agenda. This had catastrophic consequences during all of the Arab-Israeli wars and continues to make peace difficult between Israelis and Palestinians. When called out on this behavior, Arabs will assert that they were "misunderstood."
While American officers and NCOs are only too happy to impart their wisdom and skill to others (teaching is the ultimate expression of prestige), Arab officers try to keep any technical information and manuals secret. To Arabs, the value and prestige of an individual is based not on what he can teach, but on what he knows that no one else knows.
While American officers thrive on competition among themselves, Arab officers avoid this as the loser would be humiliated. Better for everyone to fail together than for competition to be allowed, even if it eventually benefits everyone.
Americans are taught leadership and technology; Arab officers are taught only technology. Leadership is given little attention as officers are assumed to know this by virtue of their social status as officers.
Initiative is considered a dangerous trait. So subordinates prefer to fail rather than make an independent decision. Battles are micromanaged by senior generals, who prefer to suffer defeat rather than lose control of their subordinates. Even worse, an Arab officer will not tell a US ally why he cannot make the decision (or even that he cannot make it), leaving US officers angry and frustrated because the Arabs won't make a decision. The Arab officers simply will not admit that they do not have that authority.
Lack of initiative makes it difficult for Arab armies to maintain modern weapons. Complex modern weapons require on the spot maintenance, and that means delegating authority, information, and tools. Arab armies avoid doing this and prefer to use easier to control central repair shops. This makes the timely maintenance of weapons difficult.
Security is maniacal. Everything even vaguely military is top secret. While US Army promotion lists are routinely published, this rarely happens in Arab armies. Officers are suddenly transferred without warning to keep them from forging alliances or networks. Any team spirit among officers is discouraged.
All these traits were reinforced, from the 1950s to the 1990s, by Soviet advisors. To the Russians, anything military was secret, enlisted personnel were scum, there was no functional NCO system, and everyone was paranoid about everyone else. These were not "communist" traits, but Russian customs that had existed for centuries and were adopted by the communists to make their dictatorship more secure from rebellion. Arab dictators avidly accepted this kind of advice, but are still concerned about how rapidly the communist dictatorships all came tumbling down between 1989-91.
Such a system can produce fearsome looking armies, but not a force that can survive an encounter with well trained and led soldiers. The same techniques are applied to government and the economy, producing tyranny and backwardness that appalls Westerners, and angers the citizens of these unfortunate states. That anger has produced many reform efforts. Including such unholy horrors as al Qaeda.
Arab leaders, especially in the Persian Gulf, are generally pretty smart, and aware of what they are working with. So they hire lots of foreigners for key technical jobs. But you still have a lot of suspicious, paranoid, poorly educated and insecure people in charge. Changing all this is, understandably, difficult.
#3
As long as arabs act like arabs, they will lose. They will be stuck in the 7th century and fall far, far behind (ok, even farther behind than now) when the world leaves oil behind as a fuel source.
Posted by: George Smiley ||
05/19/2008 20:04 Comments ||
Top||
#8
In not necesarily un-related News, TOPIX > TODAY'S ZAMAN OP-ED [Turkey] > AFRICA MUST PRODUCE OR PERISH [forever]! Gist - Iff Africans don't get their act together and learn to work positively, IN LT THEY WILL NOT ONLY LOSE THEIR NATIONS, CULTURES, AND CONTINENT TO NON-AFRICANS, BUT PERHAPS EVEN THEIR DARK ETHNICITY = IDENTITY AS WELL - IOW, AFRICA IS A REAL-TIME, CONTINENT-WIDE TEST FOR PAN-DARWINISM???
President Bush's speech to Israel's Knesset, where he equated "negotiat[ing] with the terrorists and radicals" to "the false comfort of appeasement," drew harsh criticism from Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders. They apparently thought the president was talking about them, and perhaps he was. Wittingly or not, the president may well have created a defining moment in the 2008 campaign. And Mr. Obama stepped right into the vortex by saying he was willing to debate John McCain on national security "any time, any place." Mr. McCain should accept that challenge today.
The Obama view of negotiations as the alpha and the omega of U.S. foreign policy highlights a fundamental conceptual divide between the major parties and their putative presidential nominees. This divide also opened in 2004, when John Kerry insisted that our foreign policy pass a "global test" to be considered legitimate. At first glance, the idea of sitting down with adversaries seems hard to quarrel with. In our daily lives, we meet with competitors, opponents and unpleasant people all the time. Mr. Obama hopes to characterize the debate about international negotiations as one between his reasonableness and the hard-line attitude of a group of unilateralist GOP cowboys.
The real debate is radically different. On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99% of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100% of the time. It is the 100%-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naïve and dangerous. Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.
Like all human activity, negotiation has costs and benefits. If only benefits were involved, then it would be hard to quarrel with the "what can we lose?" mantra one hears so often. In fact, the costs and potential downsides are real, and not to be ignored. When the U.S. negotiates with "terrorists and radicals," it gives them legitimacy, a precious and tangible political asset. Thus, even Mr. Obama criticized former President Jimmy Carter for his recent meetings with Hamas leaders. Meeting with leaders of state sponsors of terrorism such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il is also a mistake. State sponsors use others as surrogates, but they are just as much terrorists as those who actually carry out the dastardly acts. Legitimacy and international acceptability are qualities terrorists crave, and should therefore not be conferred casually, if at all.
Moreover, negotiations especially those "without precondition" as Mr. Obama has specifically advocated consume time, another precious asset that terrorists and rogue leaders prize. Here, President Bush's reference to Hitler was particularly apt: While the diplomats of European democracies played with their umbrellas, the Nazis were rearming and expanding their industrial power. In today's world of weapons of mass destruction, time is again a precious asset, one almost invariably on the side of the would-be proliferators. Time allows them to perfect the complex science and technology necessary to sustain nuclear weapons and missile programs, and provides far greater opportunity for concealing their activities from our ability to detect and, if necessary, destroy them. Iran has conclusively proven how to use negotiations to this end. After five years of negotiations with the Europeans, with the Bush administration's approbation throughout, the only result is that Iran is five years closer to having nuclear weapons. North Korea has also used the Six-Party Talks to gain time, testing its first nuclear weapon in 2006, all the while cloning its Yongbyon reactor in the Syrian desert.
Finally, negotiations entail opportunity costs, consuming scarce presidential time and attention. Those resources cannot be applied everywhere, and engaging in true discussions, as opposed to political charades, does divert time and attention from other priorities. No better example can be found than the Bush administration's pursuit of the Annapolis Process between Arabs and Israelis, which has gone and will go nowhere. While Annapolis has been burning up U.S. time and effort, Lebanon has been burning, as Hezbollah strengthens its position there. This is an opportunity cost for the U.S., and a tragedy for the people of Lebanon.
President Bush is not running this November, no matter how hard Mr. Obama wishes it were so. Mr. McCain will have the chance to set out his own views on when and where diplomacy is appropriate, and where more fortitude is required. In any event, from the American voter's perspective, this debate on the role of negotiations in foreign policy will be critically, perhaps mortally, important. Bring it on.
#1
Debate? They don't want a debate, they want to shout down anyone who disagrees with them and have them pilloried as heretics.
They think like children.
#3
Alobama talked about Kennedy/Kruzchev meeting as a precedent - obama obviously doesn't know his sequential history - that JFK/Kruz meeting was before the cuban missile crisis. So, it obviously didn't help the situation, also as a result of the meeting Kommie Kruzchev thought kennedy was a wimp. I can't imagine what iranian achmennut, hamas or Baby assad would think of Dandy Boy Obama. JFK was 10 times the man obama claims to be.
#1
The private sector must proactively address the insider threat by creating a smaller informed management of secure individuals, improving employee screening for new employees, updating screening for existing employees and educating top management of potential threats. The owners of critical infrastructure and key resources have a duty to confront homegrown terrorism and the insider threat.
A lovely thought, that, but how are private business managers to get access to the kind of information necessary to identify secret jihadis who are American citizens and give no sign in their outer lives of their inner inclinations and, eventually, plans?
#2
The answer is a few paragraphs above, or so the author intended I think:
It is anticipated that the report will discuss the need for the private sector to acknowledge these threats and risks and to take proactive steps to mitigate them.
This is the first step. So long as private sector leaders see this as a foreign/government issue we are incredibly vulnerable. Once they acknowledge the threat, then the report will provide recommendations on what they can do:
The recommendations to corporate America will likely focus on the need for increased education and heightened awareness, meaningful employee screening with assistance from the federal government by way of access to criminal history records, modifications to existing technology and cyber security policies and standards, and information sharing. The report is also expected to provide a library of resources to help further educate the private sector.
Some private sector organizations are working this sort of thing but way too many are oblivious to their vulnerabilities and the potential for major economic and other destruction.
#3
To me those paragraphs do not communicate well -- I don't respond well to passive language, taking it to imply a passive attitude, even when that isn't intended. Hopefully I am an exception.
Were staying at the Coronado Springs, which is also a convention center. It makes for a different mix; among the families, most of which are pasty and mid-thirties with jouncy-belly kids, theres a big contingent of pasty people in their mid-forties lugging gimme-sacks full of incredibly important material from very important conferences. The women look like managers and the men give the impression of someone who wants to golf, but cannot. The convention has to do with the Humane Society, I think. While checking in I was in front of a woman who had a T-shirt with a picture of a dead pig, and the words AUSCHWITZ BEGINS. I peered at the shirt to divine the full text: Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals - Theodor Adorno
I suspected that if an actual Auschwitz survivor had approached the woman in the shirt and upbraided her, the woman would have shrugged it off: well, shes a little too close to the matter to see the deeper meaning. Who the *$(#% wears a picture with a slaughtered pig and a specious Auschwitz equivalence to a Disney resort check-in line, anyway? Who picks that one out of the drawer and says, oh, spot-on?
Posted by: Mike ||
05/19/2008 13:21 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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#1
Let's sell Rantburg T shirts.
How about 'Killing Germs Is Murder'
or 'Germs Are People Too, So Stop Bathing'
or 'Happiness Is Sleeping With Cockroaches On Cold Nights' ?
#7
"But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of
voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through
the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were
shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious
denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and
Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously.
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question,
now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside
looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again;
but already it was impossible to say which was which." - George Orwell, Animal Farm
#8
As for Rantburg tee-shirts, I like this one from Shipman. "At some point you have to stop tracking, gathering information, analyzing the data and stringing together the variables and just shoot the Bastards."
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/19/2008 20:16 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Germs are people too!
Everytime you take a bath, you're committing genocide.
#1
Unfunny. The MSA claims to promote respect for human rights in the Muslim world. They promote the ends of terror groups, by agitating against US intervention. It is their goal to implant islamofascist parties in power throughout the Muslim tyrannies. They work within the American academic framework for the sole purpose of transforming same into an Islamic regime. Most MSA members are subsidized jihadis, who benefit from easy loans.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Why do Arabs so often lose wars against non-Arabs? Why has so much of the terrorism activity for the last few decades been carried out by Arabs? Why are Arab societies so corrupt, so uneducated and lacking in economic or scientific progress? Even raising these issues is considered un-diplomatic, provocative, racist or worse. But there is something going on. 
