Why Arabs lose wars

American Diplomacy ^ | Norvell B. De Atkine

[beckett]

Why does that stop you in your tracks? The colonel is simply saying that, while the Soviets paid lip service to (avowed) democratic values, the Soviet Union did not "function" as a democracy.

[gcruse]

Okay.  What we seem to have here, correct me if I am wrong,
is a word that has two opposite and contradictory meanings.

                               Main Entry: avow.ed.ly
                               Pronunciation: &-'vau-&d-lE
                               Function: adverb
                               Date: 1656
                               1 : with open acknowledgment : FRANKLY
                               2 : by unsupported assertion or profession alone : ALLEGEDLY

Frankly and openly acknowledged means the USSR was a democracy.
Allegedly means it was only by assertion.
 
 

[TADSLOS]

Education is in good part sought as a matter of personal prestige, so Arabs in U.S. military schools take pains to ensure that the ranking member, according to military position or social class, scores the highest marks in the class. Often this leads to “sharing answers” in class — often in a rather overt manner or in junior officers concealing scores higher than those of their superiors.

American military instructors dealing with Middle Eastern students learn to ensure that, before directing any question to a student in a classroom situation, particularly if he is an officer, the student does possess the correct answer. If this is not assured, the officer may feel he has been deliberately set up for public humiliation. In the often-paranoid environment of Arab political culture, he may then become an enemy of the instructor, and his classmates will become apprehensive about their also being singled out for humiliation — and learning becomes impossible.

I have experienced this firsthand, both as a fellow student in military courses and as an instructor. I never met an Arab officer willing to pull his own weight, either academically or physically in the field. They were all worthless and were not to be trusted.

[river rat]

We will not face an Arab army in the war against terrorism/militant Islam..

The terrorists are not the enemy we should focus on - the REAL enemy is militant Islam. The morons who buy into this murderous cult are simply looking for two things: first an explanation of why their life is so miserable (the Infidels did it) and secondly, a life better than his present miserable existence.. He is told paradise will be his if he dies in Jihad...

Terrorism is just one tool used by these militant Islamic radicals to spread Islam throughout the world - THEIR PRIMARY MISSION- Their MOST EFFECTIVE tool is to immigrate, copulate and populate. They mean to win this cultural/religious struggle by population growth within the non-Muslim nations.

The West must quickly come to terms with this fact....We have been engaged in a war of Borders, Language and Culture.... Radical Islamic Muslims in the west, do NOT intend to assimilate into OUR culture -- they intend to force us into theirs.
Semper Fi

[beckett]

I wouldn't say they are opposite and contradictory, exactly. Def. 1 means that one may openly avow a position, attitude or personal belief. Def. 2 means that a vow is simply a bald assertion or promise, unsupported by corroborating material. I suspect that the frequency of broken vows brought Def. 2 to the fore in conventional usage.

[F16Fighter]

If the question posed is whether Arab culture and genetics doom them as a viable military machine, then the answer is a resounding "YES."

[gcruse]

I have had experience working with Iranian technical maintenance personnel. It is amazing they ever get anything fixed at all. They have no notion of causality. They go for the fix that is easiest to get to, whether it fits the symptoms or not. When you try to take them down a logical pathway of how the problem should have been addressed, you end up either in an argument at the top of your lungs, or trying to find your way through some sort of mysticism about how the world works. The only enemy Arabs could defeat has to be other Arabs.

[Eaker]

GREAT POST!!

Stay safe; stay armed.

[F16Fighter]

"The only enemy Arabs could defeat has to be other Arabs."

LOL...And BTW, here I thought it was the Iranians who were the "brains" of the Arab world.

[gcruse]

Well, to tell you the truth, they deny being Arabs at all. Persians, doncha know?

[Valin]

I've always heard that it's the Palestinians. If you look at who the teacher, doctors..etc in the abrb world you'll find a large number of Palestinians.

[FreedomPoster]

That's the Israeli culture rubbing off on them. They had the highest living standards in the non-floating-in-oil Arab world, until they pissed it away in Jihad.

[Billthedrill]

I thought it was the Iranians who were the "brains" of the Arab world.

They're not Arab at all, but Persian. I trained both some years ago and the difference was startling - the only reason the Iraqis managed a stalemate over the Iranians in that conflict was that the latter had purged their armed forces of potentially "disloyal" professionals in favor of religious and political toadies after the 1979 revolution - it ended up looking like the Arabian model. The Russians did the same thing after 1917 and got the stuffing kicked out of them by the Poles less than a decade later. (Same thing happened after the purges of 1938-39 when the Wehrmacht came a-callin'.)

Of the ones I met the Iranians were head and shoulders above the rest, probably for the same cultural reasons cited by the author of the article. The veneer of Islam is, IMHO, a lot thinner over the Persian people than the Arabs, and it looks from recent events like it's wearing a little thin. This could get very interesting in the next couple of years, and maybe sooner.

[Wonder Warthog]

"...here I thought it was the Iranians who were the "brains" of the Arab world."

But the Iranians aren't Arabs--they are Persians.

[harrym]

"And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, 'Here lies a fool who tried to hurry the East'"

[harrym]

"And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, 'Here lies a fool who tried to hurry the East'"

[xJones]

Just thought I'd bump this.

[xJones]

Okay, I'll bump it one more time.

[Valin]

I really do have to start putting these things in a file.

[Nick Danger]

The more I read about the characteristics of Arab cultures, the more I believe that they are at root matriarchies, and that all this "male domination" we see is a façade. There is a lot of "stooping to conquer" going on there. Not that individual women are not treated cruelly -- everyone is treated cruelly in those cultures -- but that as a class, women -- or more accurately women's values -- run the place.

Go back and look at the behavioral characteristics of the Arab officers. There are a lot of characteristically female strategies employed in dealing with one another, and with us. Arab culture may have the face of a man, but it is a woman.