
Why Arabs Lose Wars (1999) - Tomte
http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars
======
dforrestwilson1
So, I served in the military and happen to have studied Arabic and Arab
culture quite a bit. Furthermore, I am kind of a military history buff.

The core strength of our military is that we put a lot of power in the hands
of career NCOs, who are literate and often carry more knowledge in their heads
than the boot lieutenants nominally in charge. We even have a Warrant Officer
track for technically minded NCOs.

The no-career-NCO Soviet Union style military which most of the Arab nations
have embraced is a serious hindrance, and it's notable that Russia did away
with it in 2008, leading to better military unit performance in recent
conflicts.

I would guess that the Soviet military system was originally adopted to
balance the need to utilize an illiterate uneducated peasantry while at the
same time denying them any real power or opportunity to move up the social
ladder.

It is interesting to me that the system persists in many of the U.S.' allies
today.

~~~
bane
It's my understanding that the Soviet style organization is basically a
continuation of the normal Soviet ultra-centralization-of-everything policies
that extended from the military organization to centralized hot water boilers
in Soviet cities. The Soviet education system was pretty good, by WW2 it had
turned a territory with <28% literacy (for Women it was ~13%) into an empire
with >75% literacy. In later years the number was no doubt near 100%.

It works to a point for command and control, but greatly reduces tactical
flexibility and decision making. As we've also learned from the GWoT is that
centralization makes it easier to disable an organization and that
distribution of concerns can enable forces to be much more resilient to
losses.

~~~
DrScump

      WW2 it had turned a territory with <28% literacy (for
      Women it was ~13%) into an empire with >75% literacy
    

Sure, but I'm guessing that most of the tens of millions who died from
starvation under Stalin were illiterate. That skews the counters a bit.

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alricb
It's a bit silly that the author doesn't make a link to an obvious parallel:
South Vietnam's completely dysfunctional military. Mistrust at all levels?
Check. Lack of consideration for the lives of conscripts? Check. Lack of
cooperation between units? Check. Rampant corruption, disappearing supplies?
Check. Legitimate fear of military coups? Check. Promotion based on contacts,
not competence. Check.

Essentially this is a pathology of the militaries in countries were the
government lacks legitimacy, where survival of the most paranoid is the rule.
The paramount example of this is Saddam Hussein, who would deliberately
promote incompetent idiots to the highest positions to protect his own ass and
surrounded himself with sycophants.

Mussolini's Italy is another good example, and so is the Iran of Mohammad Reza
Shah.

~~~
jernfrost
But before being too smug about these "stupid" regimes, it is shocking that
American leadership could not see these problems. That you can't win a war
with a weak colonial puppet regime. So many American policies have blown up
because one tried to prop up regimes with zero legitimize whether South
Vietnam, the Shah of Iran or leader of Cuba before Castro.

I also keep wondering why a tyrant like Hitler seemed to have an awful lot of
talented people running stuff. Why did Hitler not replace brilliant military
commanders with loyal idiots?

It is one of the ironies, that the Nazi regime seen as as being built on
cadaver decipline had a lot of independent decision making at the lower
levels.

~~~
dforrestwilson
Hitler did start to replace/subvert his highest ranking military staff, and
it's a big reason why he lost the war. Early on he did not micromanage the
various theaters, which is partly why the Wermacht did so well early on. As
the war went on, several of Hitler's best commanders were removed for railing
against his out of touch orders.

Perhaps the best example of a promotion which detracted from the war effort
was putting Hermann Goring in charge of the Luftwaffe.

You are right though that at the lower levels, the Wermacht could think
flexibly.

------
hitekker
For those interested in a historical example of a dysfunctional military, I
recommend reading:
[http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/07.html](http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/07.html)

Small passage to whet your interest:

>It is also essential to mix all the nationalities together in divisions,
regiments and battalions. If one regiment contains too many Lithuanians and
another too many Tatars, this must result from a slip-up by some military
bureaucrat. The punishment for such mistakes is harsh. The movement of such
colossal numbers of men takes up two whole months. Surprisingly, the machine
works extremely smoothly, rather like a sausage machine-all sorts of pieces of
meat, some onions, some rusks, and some garlic are put in at one end and out
of the other come solidly compressed rolls of well-mixed human material.

The author is an excellent writer and the rest of this book is worth a read.
Some facts are a little iffy, but I believe that's mostly it was published
prior to the Soviet Union opening up its archives/making primary sources
readily available.

~~~
Animats
The classic comment on the Soviet military was that units improve markedly
after they've been banged around a bit in combat. This is typical of
militaries that don't train as they fight. When they actually do fight, they
get pounded into something that works. WWII was a long, slow slog for the
Soviet army, so they had time for that to happen.

There are a few Arab military organizations that work. Hezbollah is respected
by US special ops organizations. They're tactically innovative; they've
deployed squads with three RPG gunners and one rifleman, which gave them
enough firepower to take on Israeli armor.

~~~
walshemj
Using RPG's in threes is classic ww2 tactics - your best shot hangs back whist
the first two engage simutaiously.

The idea is your best shot has a chance of rescuing the situation if the first
two don't get a Kill.

------
simonh
I've no experience with Arab militaries, but have worked in the Middle East
and with Arab telecoms companies. Quite a few of the anecdotes and
observations in the article ring true, in particular as they relate to
attitudes to training, power hierarchies and sharing information. In
particular the politics of test scores in technical training for trainees of
different ranks for a Saudi company was a difficult issue which meant in the
end we had to fudge it completely. So while I can't verify much of what is
said here, enough of it matches my own experiences that it seems pretty
credible.

------
Nimitz14
Author wrote a follow up in 2013.

[https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/23981/uploads](https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/23981/uploads)

~~~
jakejake
Knowing nearly nothing about military culture in the US, let alone other
countries, it would be interesting to hear a similarly well thought-out
argument from the Egyptian side. I'm sure through their eyes our military
culture must seem inferior. Otherwise they would have changed?

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ever1
What is the political line of this website ? I've read different articles and
it seems to lean towards far-right opinions

~~~
johansch
What would that matter? It's the arguments which count, not what the person
who wrote them "really thinks".

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Understanding the typical biases of a given source can allow you to better
watch for certain flaws in their arguments.

~~~
paulddraper
And also prompts reader biases and red herrings.

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ptaipale
This seems to be the third HN post of this article, previous ones:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976227)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476130)

It's an interesting article of course, and now it seems to generate more
discussion (I read it at one of the previous times.)

~~~
arabradical
Third time?!! This makes me wonder about the reasons for the interest in Arabs
specifically. This is propaganda meant to be shoved down the throats of the
gullible western citizen and many fall for it. It is spread by people with
Zionist inclination to keep these citizens, specifically in the US and in the
general western nations (I am a Canadian from an Arab Palestinian background),
in the service of the Zionists. Many would be laughing to read this but I
consider, especially the US citizens, as much occupied by Zionism as my people
in Palestine.

Back to the topic: "Arabic-speaking armies have been generally ineffective in
the modern era." Well you can stop right after this sentence, the rest is
uninteresting as it is talking about "armies" which went into war in 1973. But
if we scratch the word army and ask the question in the title "Why Arabs Lose
Wars" and look back just at the recent wars Arabs, the people not the armies
_, fought, you would have a completely different picture and get a completely
different answer. Like myself, you don 't have to be a military expert, to
reach that conclusion. Just go back to the war against Lebanon in 2006. The
effectiveness of the guerrilla fighter of Hizbolla would make the Navy Seals
envious. Look back at the wars against the besieged Gaza strip - the largest
prison in the world. Just watch the progress in the effectiveness of the
fighter of Hamas (who are besieged by the Zionists as well as the Camp David
regime in Egypt). Just look at the map and see how arduous it is for them to
smuggle their rockets for thousands of miles and still they succeed. How did
they fight in 2008? 2012? 2014? Go and look at Youtube and compare the
effectiveness of the Arab fighter with the Zionist one.

Why Arabs Lose Wars? The only way to win against Arabs is complete destruction
of their cities from afar just like the Americans did to the city of Fallujah,
the Zionists to the Shujayia neighbourhood in Gaza, to the city of Bent Jbeil
in South Lebanon. If you put techologies aside and just compare soldier to
soldier, courage to courage, there is no match. Do you know any nation in
history or across the planet that had so many people ready to pull a trigger
and sacrifice himself or herself for his nations freedom? You might say that's
terrorism but that's beside the point. Actually the majority of those
sacrificed themselves (from ISIS, to ALQEDA) to the service of Saudi Arabia
(the tool of the US) and for it's own wars in Afganistan, Serbia, Iraq, Syria
(all wars orchestrated by the US).

\---------------- _ these armies are just tools of governments all of whom
from Morocoo to Iraq are friends the western governments.

------
sidcool
An amazingly detailed record of military operations. Very well researched and
well written. The objectivity of the overall tone adds credence.

------
EliRivers
For those interested, Ken Pollack's "Arabs at War" contains a lot of good
material. He picks a number of nations in the region and discusses how well
they've done in various regional wars over the latter half of the 20th century
(right up until the first gulf war).

